OBI SIS THOU 




1 



CEISIS THOUGHTS. 



BY 



COL. HENRY B. CARRINGTON, U.S.A., M.A., LL.D. 



"Disce, a priseis temporibus, solicitudinem pro future, habere. 



\- .^ 



V 




PHILADELPHIA : 
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 

1878. 



7h 






Copyright, 1878, by Col. Henry B. Carrington, U.S.A. 



DEDICATIOK 



IN MEMOEY OF CONSIDERATE FEIENDSHIP, 

THIS SUMMARY OF MORE THAN FORTY YEARS OF 
EARNEST REFLECTION 

IS DEDICATED TO 

DR. JAMES M. LEETE, 

OP ST. LOUIS, MO. 



CONTENTS. 



I. — The Hour : the Peril : the Duty. 

Delivered at Columbus, Ohio, while Adjutant- 
General of Ohio, April 11 and 17, 1861 . 11 

II, — The War: its Nature and Prospects, its 
Moral and Social Evils, and its Ulti- 
mate Result. 
Delivered to the soldiers of Indiana, at In- 
dianapolis, Indiana, February 22, 1863, 
while Colonel Eighteenth United States 
Infantry, commanding the Post . . 41 

III. — Kind Words to Colored Citizens upon the 
Religious, Educational, Social, and Per- 
sonal Duty of their Race. 

^Delivered at dedication of church edifice for 
Colored Citizens, while temporarily on duty 
at Indianapolis, June 17, 1869 . . .79 



EXPLAT^ATORT. 



It is more tlian seventeen years since members 
of the Ohio Senate caused the first of these ad- 
dresses to be repeated and published. It had 
been solemnly inspired by the conviction, pub- 
licly expressed, that " a war was impending 
which would outlast a presidential term, would 
cost hundreds of thousands of lives and thousands 
of millions of money." 'No blood had then been 
shed. The address was voluntary, and was illus- 
trated by large maps of Pensacola and Charleston 
harbors, and diagrams of fortifications and ord- 
nance. It was twice repeated, and before its 
last delivery Fort Sumter fell. Its republication 
has been requested by those whose judgment I 
respect. It was not at first the gush of a hasty 
impulse. 

In 1836 a stranger visited a boarding-school 
at Torringford, Connecticut, which was con- 
ducted by Rev. Mr. Goodman and Dr. Eadcliff 
Hudson, both of whom were afterwards mobbed 
in JS'ew England, for expressing anti-slavery 
opinions. The stranger explained to the class 
in geography, the nature and history of African 

7 



8 EXPLANATORY. 

slavery and the slave trade. He asked his 
listeners to stand up, if they were willing during 
after-years, to pray and labor for universal 
liberty. The stranger was John Brown, who 
departed this life at Charlestown, Virginia. 

The impression made by that stranger was 
never effaced. 

Certain violence at Farmington, Connecticut, 
in 1839, and at Columbus, Ohio, in 1849, inci- 
dentally referred to on page 83, only deepened 
that impression, and indicated that ultimate con- 
flict, alone, would solve the maturing issue. 

In February, 1861, Senator Chase thus ad- 
dressed the writer, then adjutant-general of Ohio : 
" Our most sober thinkers, and those best in- 
formed, as well as conservative men from the 
South, predict war. Our militia should be offi- 
cered by the wisest and best men. How soon 
they may be needed, no man can tell." 

Mr. Cass, Secretary of State, in writing to the 
same officer, and referring to his own relations 
with President Buchanan, said, " We have indeed 
fallen upon evil times, when those who should pre- 
serve, seem bent upon destroying, the country." 

The later addresses, to the soldiers of Indiana, 
on Washington's birthday, 1863, and to the 
colored people of Indianapolis, on the dedication 
of a church edifice, in 1869, are parts of one 
enforced sequence .of convictions, which have 
proper place with the first address. 



EXPLANATORY. 9 

The first foreshadowed the struggle. The 
second contemplated a crisis in its progress. The 
third sought to win an emancipated race to right 
appreciation of so costly a deliverance. 

As grouped, they testify of the dangers of 
political passion and the value of peace, at any 
honorable compromise of non-essentials, and 
appeal to parties, sections, and races " to learn 
from former experiences to have solicitude for 
the future," and thus unite, as did the Roman 
Senate in its supreme hour of peril, to " see that 
no harm shall befall the republic." 

Wabash College, Cbawfordsville, Ind., 
July 4, A.D. 1878. 



1* 



THE HOUR: THE PERIL: THE DUTY. 



DELIVERED AT COLUMBUS, OHIO, WHILE ADJUTANT- 
GENERAL OP OHIO, APRIL 11 AND 17, 1861. 



In an hour like this, when the nervous wire 
thrills, each second, with some fresh note of 
alarm, when men hold their breath as they wait 
upon the electric flash, when minutes fulfil the 
work of hours, and each day is more fraught 
with issues vital to freedom and mankind than 
were months or years in earlier times, it is pre- 
eminently necessary that we meet each crisis 
squarely, weigh well our several obligations, and 
prove resolute for each and every duty or en- 
deavor that may be forced against us. 

N^or is any citizen or class of citizens exempt 
from a share of responsibility at such a time. 
]S"one worthy the name will disclaim that respon- 
sibility, or fail to testify their interest. The man 
of daily labor pauses in his round of work to ask 
for the " last dispatch," and all trades and occu- 
pations, all crafts and callings, share in undefined 
but real apprehension as to our national future. 

Could we rise above the trammels of party 
bias and personal concern, and, as lovers of 

11 



12 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

liberty and lovers of justice, calmly review the 
scenes which from hour to hour transpire wher- 
ever civilized man is now the actor, all that 
appears involved, or gloomy, would take order 
and unity, and would fill its fit place in the grand 
drama now being enacted, which will have as its 
catastrophe the end of despotism, and as its 
climax, the supremacy of liberty and right. 

Could we rise to a still loftier height of obser- 
vation, and perceive the hand of the Infinite, as 
with magic art and plastic touch it moulds the 
nations and bends the designs of men to the 
development of a Kingdom of Peace, we could 
even exult in all that now seems forbidding, or 
fatal to the public weal, and could behold, with 
all the assurance of prophecy itself, the dawning 
of a better day. 

But the finite mind, as it gazes upon the 
swiftly-changing scenes, and traces the swelling 
volume of the plot, and the startling issues that 
boldly leap to view through each succeeding act, 
wearies with the complex mechanism and the 
confused purposes that mark the parts, until at 
length we dread each shift of scene, as if the 
Sixth Seal and the woes of the Apocalyptic vision 
were presently to be ushered upon the earth. 

FREEDOM ADVANCES. 

If we prove dull to the voice of history, and 
fail to see on all its records the signs of progres- 



REACTION BUT TEMPORARY. 13 

sive growth, and the ultimate freedom of man- 
kind ; if we perceive not the accumulated power 
which Christianity herself has infused into each 
advancing Commonwealth or State : we have at 
least reached a period of human progress where, 
with all the confidence of the intrepid Galileo, 
we may exclaim, " The world moves," at last. 

Not alone in science and art; not alone in 
aesthetic culture and social growth ; not alone in 
material wealth and power ; but in the freedom 
of the State, and freedom of the individual man 
himself, the world moves, onward, and upward. 

REACTION BUT TEMPORARY. 

Reaction, by a normal law of nature, may 
assert its tendency for a passing hour ; and the 
rebound of an active principle may beget a 
transient pause in the onward sweep of Liberty 
to its culminating triumph. The task-master 
may, again and again, assert his divine right to 
appropriate and use the unrequited toil of his 
fellow-man. Legitimate revolution may seem 
barren of fruit, and the counterfeit may put on 
the mien of proud and defiant mastery. Liberty 
may take the guise of License, and Anarchy may 
usurp the name and garb of Liberty ! But Time, 
which receives them all into her appropriating 
charge, will try them in a fiery crucible, — will 
evolve the pure and reject the false. 

The world has been convulsed by dynastic 



14 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

changes heretofore. The race has been con- 
founded by strange and unnatural conflicts here- 
tofore. Right, Liberty, and Religion have been 
the plaything or contempt of false friends and 
still falser foes, and the tyrant has appeared only 
to mature in strength in his struggle with the 
down-trodden and oppressed, and to ride tri- 
umphantly over the fairest hopes of the people, 
heretofore. 

Rome and Greece, Gaul and Britain, Poland 
and Hungary, France and Germany, have passed 
through the furnace, seven times heated, and 
with unequal issue ; but in all, and through all, 
the advance of the people toward Liberty and 
Peace, has been true to the promised destiny of 
the race. Even where old organisms retain their 
form and name, you will still behold a change 
of feature. That which was once asserted in the 
name of despotic sway, has put on the show of 
serving the people, only through some time- 
honored machinery of the State. From week to 
week, and from hour to hour, through trial and 
peril, and in all the changing phases of our social 
life, we read the fresh assurance, that the cause 
of Humanity and Right is drawing near its 
crowning triumph. 

SIGNS OF PROGRESS. 

Ten years ago, and no mortal foresight could 
have anticipated the momentous changes and 



ALL NATIONS PLAY THEIR PART. 15 

brilliant trophies which now adorn and dignify 
the advancing cause. Then, it had been mad- 
ness to prophesy that which has already become 
fruition. Then, hope deferred made the heart 
sick, and it seemed as if all continental progress 
was at an end. Now, look at the contrast. 

The press whispers, and thrones tremble. At 
the dash of its pen, new policies are inaugurated, 
and new codes enacted. Senates and Chambers, 
Deputies and Congresses, and all other modern 
types of representation of the popular will, simply 
decline their sanction, or declare their enmity to 
acts of a despotic scope, and that which once was 
known only to the privy council, or some self- 
reliant tyrant, until its crushing weight fell upon 
the unresisting commons, now drops nerveless 
and harmless before the breath of debate. 

Magna Charta was but the forerunner. Every- 
where the Proclamation, the Ukase, the Hatti 
Sheriff, and the Edict, are letting down the 
throne to receive upon its platform of power the 
true sovereign, the People. 

ALL NATIONS PLAY THEIR PART. 

China stands open to the world. Binding 
treaties pledge her to admit free speech, free 
press, and an untrammelled conscience, as part 
of her method and policy. Japan unbars her 
gates, and accepts all nations as her neighbors. 
India dissolves the restraints of caste, unites her 



15 CRISIS THOUGHTS, 

boundaries by the railroad and tbe telegraph, 
and the long-lived oppression of a selfish corpo- 
ration gives place to the benignant sway of the 
English constitution and laws. Even Africa, so 
long the scorn of nations, discloses vast fields for 
profitable culture, and welcomes commerce to 
her new traffic in the cotton and the cane. 

Turkey renounces the sale of man, and the 
Christian becomes the equal of the child of Ma- 
homet in the hall of litigation, the porch of the 
mosque, and the bazaar of trade. 

Russia enfranchises her servile millions, and 
no longer dares refuse to the struggling Poles a 
liberal code, a representative Council, and the 
machinery of a healthy organization, to be 
officered and directed by men of their own race 
and language. 

Austria, wellnigh bankrupt in name and 
credit, flies from canons, and consistories, and 
concordats, to find her only hope and life in the 
organized representation of the people them- 
selves. 

Hungary calmly but firmly accepts the offer as 
a matter of simple right ; while Transylvania and 
Servia present the same demand with assurance 
of success. France grows strong, but only in 
the warmth of maturing freedom ; and all conti- 
nents are agitated, or upheaved, by the impend- 
ing issue, in which Liberty shall surely triumph. 
True it is that the iron arm of despotism, wher- 



ALL NATIONS PLAY THEIR PART. 17 

ever and however energizing, still threatens the 
well-being of every State and people, and this, no 
matter how many disguises it assumes, that it 
may protract the struggle and attain its will. 

The Emperor of France is styled " Emperor, 
by the will of the French." The new-born 
Kingdom of Italy, fair of proportion, and regal 
in beauty, seats upon her throne a sovereign 
" King, by the will of the people." Thrones 
become insignificant, and titles are but shadows ! 
The leaven of liberty is at work, forcing itself 
even into the presence-chamber of the Vatican, 
and compelling Hapsburg and Bourbon alike to 
bend with respect to its sublime and persistent 
progress. 

But a few more conflicts with the barbarism 
of wrong, a few more lances splintered with the 
champions of the worn-out systems of feudal 
times, and freedom shall become the law of 
nations as it is the law of God. Fair pledges, 
specious guarantees, temporizing shifts, may 
defer the day; but it surely draws on apace. 
Soon, in politics as well as in religion and ethics, 
it will not satisfy the honest searcher after truth, 
to style evil good, and good evil, — to pronounce 
the bitter sweet, and the sweet bitter. But truth, 
simple and unqualified, uncompromised away by 
refinements of clique or party, undiluted by 
selfish sacrifice of. principle for. temporary ends, 
will live and flourish. You and I may or may 



18 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

not survive the struggle that must usher in the 
final scene ; but come it must, and come it will. 
Even on the American continent, this agitation 
has been recognized and felt. Mexico, and her 
sister republics of Spanish pedigree, have been 
turned upon the wheel of Fortune, until you can 
scarcely distinguish the sway of the patriot from 
the rule of the despot. 

THE UNITED STATES NO LONGER A MERE SPECTATOR. 

Heretofore, seemingly remote from these con- 
flicts, our own beloved land has sympathized 
with all oppressed nations, while her benefactions 
have not been withheld, neither have any turned 
from her charity away. Kosciusko and Bozzaris, 
Bolivar and Kossuth, alike thanked God that 
America had a being. Ireland and Madeira 
were rescued in their hour of desolation and 
wasting, and with glad hearts and voices sent up 
their incense of prayer and praise to Him who 
hitherto had blessed us. 

But this proud republic is no longer before the 
footlights, an eager but independent spectator. 
Just as the head turns dizzy, and the eye wearies 
with beholding nation after nation dragged 
through the bewildering maze of characters and 
conflicts, we, too, are hurled upon the stage, 
forced to become the centre of all eyes, and to 
be tested as to our loyalty to freedom, and our 
right to the exalted post of her standard-bearer. 



ELEMENTS OF PRESENT TROUBLE. 19 

Planted in the highway of nations, clasping 
the continent with our arms, bounding, as at 
one leap, to unparalleled culture, greatness, and 
power, yet proud and zealous for a still wider 
sweep of empire, even at the expense of principle 
and others' rights, we reach this dizzy pitch of 
greatness, only to seem poised for a fall, the 
more fatal if we prove recreant to our trust, as our 
pre-eminence has been the more distinguished. 

ELEMENTS OF PRESENT TROUBLE. 

I^or will I pause here to analyze critically the 
causes which have induced the peril; neither 
will I impose upon any class of men or measures 
the sole responsibility for the impending struggle. 
Few could relieve themselves from a share of the 
burden, while all should feel that they must 
gladly meet any sacrifice to regain the vantage 
ground already lost. And yet, before I treat of 
the issue which is most pressing, and express my 
humble judgment of the path of duty, which 
should be boldly traced, permit me to refer to 
certain grave considerations, which have made 
our present peril almost inevitable, while they 
have also supplied the elements and accessories 
of revolution and riot. 

I. Iforal Principle JRejeded hy Politicians. 

The first disorganizing element that I shall 
notice lies in the prevalent assumption that our 



20 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

historic prestige and our present destination, as 
the experimental model of Republican institu- 
tions in the world, absolves us from allegiance to 
those laws and moral maxims, which we enjoin 
upon dependent States, and which are, indeed, 
the only solid basis of individual or natural 
greatness. This may be traced in our arrogant 
diplomacy with lesser States, our thirst for ex- 
tended territory, our contempt for Indian trea- 
ties, and our subjection of all political issues, 
whether of a moral or economic nature, to the 
behests of mere action, policy, or party. His- 
tory records no instance of true national great- 
ness achieved at such sacrifice of substantial, 
genuine principle. 

11, Tampering with the Union. 

A second fatal assumption is, that the bond of 
Union has become so permanent, peaceful, and 
stable, that it can be tampered with at pleasure; 
that parties may even stake their existence or 
success upon Union or Disunion issues, for merely 
adventitious triumphs, and may at the same time 
take for granted that the Union will suffer no 
harm. 

Threats of disunion have been made for many 
years ; but more threats have been made for mere 
party effect than there are now disunionists in 
the land. If the entire people could realize that 
such a question can no more be trifled with. 



ELEMENTS OF PRESENT TROUBLE. 21 

without injury to the State, than private virtue 
or private character can bear a like freedom 
without degradation or taint, we should be more 
careful to guard this jewel of our national honor, 
at whatever sacrifice of party or place. Besides 
this, the United States have not been compelled 
to fight their way to present distinction at the 
cost of constant sacrifice and pain. Our fathers 
did indeed prove their valor and achieve their 
freedom by the ordeal of fire ; and they, at least, 
appreciated and honored the freedom thus at- 
tained. But for nearly half a century our country 
has advanced, regardless alike of jealousy abroad 
and any and all deliberate systems of develop- 
ment at home. It has grown of itself. With 
government and institutions apparently perma- 
nent, with all the advantages of freedom in the 
State, and a Christian civilization among the 
people, and with unparalleled variety and rich- 
ness of soil and mineral wealth, we have not 
even developed our accumulating resources as 
rapidly as ligature and Providence have brought 
them to light. 

We have come to consider our franchises, our 
progress, and our destiny, as fixed quantities, 
subject to such changes only as will perpetuate 
and develop them. We disregard fundamental 
axioms of national growth and unity, we despise 
the idea of a higher law than passing expediency, 
and rest upon the flattering conceit that nothing 



22 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

can rend or shatter the political fabric here 
established. 

Our strength, our wealth, our cultivation, and 
our liberty have made us arrogant, self-sufficient, 
and proud, and the fruit of this weakness we 
now gather in an abundant but baleful harvest 
of dissension, discord, and threatened dismem- 
berment. We forget that Liberty, like chastity, 
is jealous of reproach, and can be conserved only 
by an unblemished and unsuspected carriage. 

III. Thirst for Office. 

Still another element that depreciates and 
defiles the body politic lies in the infatuation for 
office, which has become more wide-spread, im- 
portunate, and ruinous to public virtue than the 
world has before witnessed, and is nearly as fatal 
to the State as dissolution itself It lies at the 
base of party affinities, shapes its policy, fights 
its battles, and demands its rewards. But woe to 
that party which, when it rises into place, is led 
to make mere party fealty the qualification for 
preferment to places of trust, rather than the 
intrinsic worth of the candidates themselves. 

These evils — the banishment of moral principle 
from political action, the trifling with our liber- 
ties upon the conceit of their own inherent 
perpetuity, and thirst for political office — have 
grown with our growth, have driven thousands 
of our most patriotic citizens from the public 



ELEMENTS OF PRESENT TROUBLE. 23 

service, and now threaten to utterly demoralize 
the people themselves, or to engender a morbid 
indifference to all issues but the party issues of 
the passing hour. 

When the good and virtuous feel it a degra- 
dation to enter the political arena, it always 
augurs ill for the public weal, even although 
their isolation and neglect of duty cannot excuse 
them for their share of responsibility for the 
very consequences they deplore. 

All these elements of mischief have had their 
share in the palsy which has seized the body 
politic and held it powerless at the feet of rebel- 
lion or factious opposition to law. 

IV. Failure to Appreciate our Peril. 

But there is yet another element inherent in a 
peaceful and law-abiding State, the operation of 
which facilitates political treason, while it insures 
the punishment of other crimes. Whatever may 
be the daring of parties, all alike profess allegiance 
to the fundamental law, and all good citizens are 
reluctant to believe in a systematic endeavor to 
overthrow it. This very regard for peace re- 
strains them from stern preparatory measures 
for the suppression of organizations, which, after 
all, may show but the ebullition of hasty temper, 
indulged through the legitimate organs of free 
speech and a free press. The line is so narrow 
that bounds the privilege and the treason, that 



24 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

the faithful citizen is only able to meet the evil 
when the traitor casts oiF disguise, and stands 
forth at an armed advantage, to overturn the 
State. I^othing but an immediate and over- 
whelming rally of loyal citizens can prevent a 
transient victory for the disorganizers, if the 
ramifications of the plot have been extended, the 
precautions ample, and the overt offence be, at 
last, sufficiently bold. 

These are a few of the leading elements which 
have borne a significant part in shaping the 
present national issues. It would not be hazard- 
ous to predicate upon these those earlier c^'safFec- 
tions which threatened the internal tran^ lillity 
of the nation, but were quelled for the moment. 
Even as to those, it is a question whether the 
bold vindication of law by the Government did 
not accomplish more than the contemporary 
compromises, so called, and whether, had the 
latter been wanting, we might not stand to-day 
at a point far more advanced in social and politi- 
cal greatness, and be free from the peculiar issues 
which, by those very compromises, were only 
fostered, and thereby transmitted with an ac- 
cumulated intensity and virulence of operation 
and spirit. 

V. Question of Slavery, 

It would be violence to the subject not to 
recognize the palpable fact that the elements of 



ELEMENTS OF PRESENT TROUBLE. 25 

political prostration and decay, already alluded 
to, have derived peculiar force and vitality from 
the presence and operation of the abnormal 
system of human slavery. Though the present 
generation is not responsible for its introduction, 
though the founders of the Republic deplored its 
existence and erected their temple of liberty upon 
foundations inconsistent with its perpetuity and 
expansion, and though, like all other systems of 
oppression and wrong, its doom is certain, it 
does, nevertheless, exist, and affect the entire 
social and political fabric of the State. Our past 
career proves, however, that the nation can 
prosper and advance, even under the weight of 
this burden ; and that, with a genuine patriotism 
diffused through all hearts and sections, we can 
still labor earnestly and unitedly for the public 
weal. But it is equally true that, in States which 
entertain this domestic institution, the funda- 
mental elements of discord, before adverted to, 
have had peculiar force and sanction. Timid in 
the presence of superior and controlling forces, 
indebted to the law of toleration, rather than 
that of nature or revelation, for its continuance 
and power, it cannot fail to be anti-democratic in 
essence, and aristocratic in manifestation and 
tone. Religion and true loyalty to country are 
indeed as purely and nobly cherished where 
slavery has its foothold as elsewhere ; and when 
these hold in subjection to their redeeming and 

2 



26 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

ennobling work its operation and spirit, we may 
hope for an end to all our conflicts and its own 
extinction; but when the animus of human 
slavery becomes the absorbing sentiment of any 
ambitious clique or faction, and rules by its own 
inherent demands and necessities, the confusion 
of its advocates or the ruin of the nation are the 
sole alternatives. 

I say this much, not by way of party logic, 
nor from failure to appreciate the virtue, self- 
denial, and patriotism of the South ; nay, rather 
because, knowing these well in their purity and 
value, I behold their exponents silenced or over- 
shadowed by the more daring and unscrupulous 
manifestations of the turbulent and rebellious. 

CUE PRESENT STATUS. 

We have passed through a constitutional elec- 
tion of a Chief Magistrate of the United States. 
He received the electoral vote of a majority of 
the States, representing two-thirds of the popula- 
tion, material wealth, and physical power of the 
nation. Those States accept the Constitution as 
it is, and, further, avow their readiness to surren- 
der all mere matters of construction to the author- 
ity having the matter in charge. They would go 
farther than this, and settle beyond reasonable 
cavil all parts of the organic law which need 
distinct explanation, if such there be, to render 
the whole more harmonious and complete. 



OUR PRESENT STATUS. 27 

The government, elected by the people, assumes 
the reins of power. In their charge are placed 
the care of the public property, the vindication 
of the public honor, the assurance of the public 
peace. Land, wherever situated, forts, however 
located, treasure, wherever deposited, belong to 
the entire people, and no section can, of right, 
arrogate a claim to any specific or distributive 
share, or legally alienate from the Federal centre 
its possession and control. 

The obligation rests upon the government to 
protect each and every citizen, wherever located, 
from illegal arrest, and the destruction of his 
constitutional franchise and rights. If he be 
oppressed by few or many, it matters not. If he 
be imperilled, or overaAved in attempted self- 
vindication of those rights by organized violators 
of the public peace, his claim for full and ade- 
quate redress is not impaired ; but, on the con- 
trary, it is increased in proportion as he loses 
all other methods of redress, and is forced to 
look to the centra] power for any possible relief. 
While, therefore, this government is powerless 
to usurp undelegated authority, it cannot shrink 
from that which it is sworn to exercise. It may, 
and should, exhaust peaceful and conciliatory 
measures with the offenders; it may adapt its 
policy, so far as practicable, to subdue excite- 
ment and ensure reflection on the part of the 
disappointed or rebellious; but it cannot extend 



28 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

sucli measures to abnegation of its own superi- 
ority without becoming, in time, traitor to the 
people and State. Acting under the Constitution 
of the United States, and bound by its provisions, 
the extent of any disaffection cannot change or 
impair the duty, but rather must enhance the 
responsibility, at least until by other and legiti- 
mate methods the existing relations of the parties 
shall be determined, or shall be predicated upon 
a new and different fundamental basis. 

EXPEDIENCY AND SANCTION. 

All questions of expediency and peaceful ad- 
justment lose force and value as soon as they 
cease to operate as remedies for the evils threat- 
ened. The use of sanctions and the vindications 
of authority must then be interposed at the very 
risk of war itself; nay, war exists before a blow 
is struck, and the extent and nature of its mani- 
festations must determine the appliances which 
shall be rallied for its arrest. I arrogate to my- 
self no special office as teacher or guide ; but as 
citizens, let us not prove blind to the issue that 
is upon us. While we have for days, and weeks, 
and months, plead for almost any relief from 
war, it is nevertheless true that a greater evil 
than war may befall us. I would that we could 
seriously appreciate our exact standpoint, and 
feel that we ought not, must not, simply look to 
our own individual concerns, as a State, or sec- 



OUR NATIONAL PRESTIGE. 29 

tion, but remember that we stand responsible to 
millions, in tlie disaffected States as well as bere 
at home, for tbe assurance to them of liberties 
now in peril. 

With this general statement of the case, let 
me pass to consider very briefly our position as 
a nation, under the Constitution as it is, the 
nature and tendency of the disaffection as it 
exists, and our responsibility, whether willing or 
unwilling, for the perpetuation of that Constitu- 
tion, and the liberty it secures. 

OUR NATIONAL PRESTIGE. 

Our national position is a proud and noble one. 
Of all the European struggles for liberty since 
our own Republic has held a place among the 
nations, not one has originated, advanced, or 
come to an issue, without a decided moral sup- 
port from the United States. Its proud isolation 
from external attack, and its matured power and 
influence, have given shape to aspirations, and 
engendered hope of ultimate freedom, the world 
over. The policy of every maritime State has 
been liberalized, softened, and to a large extent 
modelled upon the assurance of our own expand- 
ing greatness upon the sea. Interior powers 
have learned to pay us the same respect. Our 
position, midway between civilized Europe and 
half-pagan Asia, has given us the locus in quo, 
by which, with corresponding physical power 



30 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

and training, we can command tlie trade of the 
world. The very treaties which now govern the 
commercial relations of European States in times 
of war, have heen initiated by the bold declara- 
tion of a more enlightened policy by the United 
States. The surrender of the right of search, the 
immunity of the goods of neutrals, the abandon- 
ment by Denmark of her impositions upon the 
trade of the Baltic, the independence of the 
western continent from foreign control, have all 
grown out of our own just demands, our asserted 
power, and our commercial pre-eminence. The 
title of American citizen has become a credential 
of safety and honor, reverenced by struggling 
commons, respected by governing tyrants. Peace 
with America has become a desideratum, and 
threatened war with America would derange 
the finances, impair the prosperity, and imperil 
the peace of all nations. American discovery, 
American invention, American science, no less 
than American power, wealth, and liberty, have 
raised her to that fulcrum of force from which 
to move and direct the world. Fealty to our 
own boasted liberty, justice in dealing, and un- 
swerving loyalty to principle, would secure us 
the title and influence of the model State. 

THE CONTRAST. 

IS'o pen of mine, nor imagination of man, can 
portray the contrast, when dissolution, degrada- 






THE CONTRAST. 31 

tion, and cowardice shall characterize the once 
United States ; when, torn to fragments, bereft of 
dignity and power, they shall become the prey 
of internal discord and foreign license. A failure 
in Hungary, with our example still bright and 
illustrious, is less a failure than a temporary 
check. A failure with us is signal, fatal, and 
universal. It cannot but relax the restraints of 
law, let loose the passions of the evil-minded, 
undermine the confidence of the good, threaten 
the integrity of personal rights and personal 
industry, and dissolve all political relations into 
anarchy and desolation, or breed some new com- 
bination ; for, while that which is the fruit of 
willing compromise may live and prosper, as if 
no difference had once alienated the parties, that, 
which the majority yield to the mere force of 
intimidation and pressure, will prove the tunic 
of E'essus, fatal only to the betrayer of virtue and 
truth. 

Such is our high position among the nations, 
and such the alternative with which we are 
threatened. What is our condition at home ? 
We are even told that we must abandon the 
old Constitution, or perish. Rebellion, growing 
hourly, and with increasing violence and force, 
can indeed point to no liberties which the Union 
cannot preserve, no fundamental or practical 
franchise which the government of the Union 
will not secure. It demands a positive surrender 



32 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

of Federal authority to the minority choice of a 
restricted section of the country, or the issue of 
civil conflict. It is not my design to ask by what 
avenue this evil has thus matured and waxed 
turbulent and daring. It is none the less press- 
ing and actual, whatever its origin and growth. 
It is enough for the honest man and patriot, the 
man who loves liberty at the risk of offending 
clique or party, that it exists, and that he has to 
meet the duties it involves. 

If the question were simply that of a willing 
and legalized separation of free States, no matter 
how my national pride might suffer, no matter 
how much we should feel degraded among the 
nations for such wilful surrender of our glorious 
birthright at the behests of the institution which 
would be the wedge of our separation, I, for one, 
could trust Providence and the civilized world 
with the reputation and destiny of twenty millions 
of freemen. 

THE PEOPLE DISCARDED. 

But that issue, however and wherever mooted, 
is not a practical issue in the matter that now 
challenges our attention. The people at large 
have adopted no authorized methods by which 
even to consider the claims of so humiliating an 
issue. More than that, I aflarm that no man, 
wherever he may live, and whatever part he may 
bear in this struggle, can say with truth that a 



THE PEOPLE DISCARDED. 33 

single one of these tliirty-four States has, by a 
legal and fair method, or by any method what- 
ever, obtained the deliberate assent of its people 
to this rebellion. IsTot a single Court of Appeals, 
even in the seven extreme States, could fail to 
declare unconstitutional and void the acts even 
of its own disorganizing convention, upon a fair 
trial of its acts by its own fundamental law, in- 
dependent of that of the United States. In no 
one State have a majority of the legal voters so 
expressed a choice. Even in Texas, the whole 
vote was comparatively limited and insignificant. 
In no single State was the so-called election of 
delegates permitted to reach the suffrages of the 
remote townships and common people. Of the 
choice of the remaining slave States, upon a free, 
untrammelled expression, I think no man can 
entertain a doubt. Even the wildest disunionist 
in the border States trembles lest the people shall 
be fully and freely heard. In Alabama, Georgia, 
Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, there are 
thousands who writhe under the swelling despot- 
ism, and only need a sure support to vindicate 
their rights. They need that protection which 
is their right and safeguard. Many who cry 
" hands off," wish peace ; but many, many more, 
ask for peace, only to rally the hosts of evil and 
ensure a more widespread desolation. 

2* 



34 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 



FIRMNESS OUR ONLY SAFETY. 

I ask, then, this simple question : Are we not 
impelled by highest duty to stand by the loyal 
and the true ? Shall we despise their cry and 
neglect their liberation for fear of a contest with 
their oppressors ? 

1^0 man doubts that early and firm support 
would have given the Union men the control of 
every State. The tide grew only because it 
could grow unrestrained. K there had been no 
Constitution, no courts, no law, no process, no 
public sentiment, no religion, the usurpation 
could scarcely have been more steady, high- 
handed, and triumphant. 'No other government 
in the world could, with open, unrebuked treason 
in its legislative halls, have stood an hour, unless 
the traitors assumed of it, as they seem to have 
done, that it was respectable in mechanism, but, 
practically, fit only to be wound up quadrennially 
for the distribution of spoils and office. 

Human wisdom trusted in peaceful measures, 
and if precaution and comity had gone hand in 
hand, all would have been well; but now the 
issue comes on apace, and nothing is left but 
vindication of authority. I would go to the ex- 
treme of honorable concession, but when conces- 
sion aggravates rebellion, when its announcement 
is received as weakness, when the profier of the 
hand is disdainfully rejected, and the hours of 



FIRMNESS OUR ONLY SAFETY, 35 

lenity are employed as a season of preparation 
for a fiercer conflict, concession becomes mad- 
ness : it only aggravates the demands of the 
aggressor, and disheartens the real lover of honor 
and country. 

To say nothing of public credit, national honor, 
and the vitality of the general issue, we are pressed 
to the point of the sword. Fort Sumter has 
been attacked and taken ;* Fort Pickens may be 
stormed. But where does their change of occu- 
pants relieve the body politic ? Since first their 
surrender was mooted, the times have changed, 
and to make the latter of these a voluntary pre- 
cedent for similar withdrawals from other Federal 
soil, if it can now be held, at whatever risk, would 
be to bind the yoke upon the deserving and loyal 
of the South, and render their emancipation from 
that yoke the work of a more fearful struggle 
among themselves. Regarded separate and apart 
from the rights of the l^orth. East, and West, in 
and to the waters of the Mississippi and the Gulf, 
and the unnumbered interests which are thereby 
inwrought into the very national fabric itself, can 
we do less for the South itself, in this exhibition 
of its own status, than vindicate law, assert 
authority, and leave the issue with the God of 
battles ? 

Such an issue, full as it is of sacrifice and hard- 

* " Fort Sumter may fall" (as first delivered). 



I 



36 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

ship, is to be met with zeal and holy boldness. 
Better, far better, that we should be hurled into 
civil conflict than wilt under the scourge of a 
despotism more severe, and a treason more vile, 
than the world has ever witnessed. Tell me not 
that you would spare the flow of fraternal blood, 
and prefer rather the lash of the master and the 
sway of a despot. War, my countrymen, is 
indeed a vast evil ; but there is a more fearful 
alternative, the surrender of our dearest birth- 
right at the behest of despots and traitors. 

If the legacy of the Fathers be no longer worth 
preservation ; if law be a bugbear, and obedience 
a sham ; if the State owe nothing to the people, 
and the people have nothing to expect of, or to 
render to, the State : what a mockery has our 
Union become, what a nuisance upon the face 
of the earth ! 

And yet, look at the elements which exist and 
would to-day triumphantly vindicate our honor 
if they could be brought into prompt and healthy 
exercise. Education is more general and Chris- 
tianity is more diffused, in the United States, than 
elsewhere in the world. The principles of gen- 
uine liberty and the maxims of universal freedom 
are better understood, and more heartily cher- 
ished, in the United States than elsewhere in the 
world. The instrumentalities for their diffusion, 
the range of their influence, and the field for their 
application, are here pre-eminently displayed; 



THE PRACTICAL ISSUE. 37 

and the interests at stake, in their firm and per- 
petual establishment, are here more precious and 
multiform than elsewhere in the world. The 
moral power which underlies our institutions, if 
brought into exercise and made the inspiration 
of a just cause, would be invincible against the 
world. "When our existence is threatened, as 
at present, these are the elements which should 
spring into the issue, and bend all parties and 
factions to their control. 

And now to one more practical question before 
I dismiss the subject. 

THE PRACTICAL ISSUE. 

All the grievances of which the extreme vio- 
lators of law complained before the people a few 
months ago, are ready of adjustment. 'No man 
dare deny it. What more would they have ? 
Absolute, unqualified revolution ! absolute, un- 
qualified re-organizatit3n ! There will even be 
found men before thirty days shall expire, and 
such there are now, if they dare avow their 
views — unless we burst from the chains that now 
fetter us, and rush to arms to vindicate our im- 
perilled liberties and rights, and strike down all 
traitors, wherever found — I say, unless you do 
this, and do it now, there will be found men who 
would rather accept the code of the rebel league, 
their governing system, and their leaders, ignore 
the claims of the people and the heritage of the 



38 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

past, dissolve tlie government of the Fathers, and 
accept the counterfeit, than spend one ounce of 
treasure or risk one drop of blood to save the 
Constitution as it is. The Union, purchased at 
such a sacrifice, would be a hissing and a by- 
word, a foul and loathsome thing, which it were 
religion to trample on and annihilate. But, be- 
cause there are always pests in society, desperate 
robbers and constitutional thieves, we do not 
despair of law and justice; neither because there 
may be traitors to Liberty and the State at our 
own hearthstones, will we abandon Liberty and 
the State. Rather let us stand by the Constitu- 
tion as it is, meeting with warm hearts and hands 
those political brethren who, difiering in non- 
essentials, are true to the fundamental code of 
our national being, and, at any risk, however 
trying, or any sacrifice, however costly, execute 
the law, protect the oppressed, vindicate our 
honor, and perpetuate the State. 

We may shrink from the encounter ; we may 
dread the issue ; but no struggle for the right is 
so hazardous as its betrayal ; no blood is so costly 
as that which strangles the coward's heart, rather 
than be spent for life and honor. 

We are fast enough already to spend blood and 
treasure to seize the land of the stranger. Let us 
now see if we have the nerve to maintain our own. 

Let me not be misunderstood. I advocate no 
special party tenet in this extremity. I would 



THE PRACTICAL ISSUE. 39 

use all the appliances that sound patriotism and 
solid judgment can command ; but we are at war. 
It is our own existence that is at stake. The 
shedding of blood is a mere contingency in the 
contest, neither commencing nor ending the 
struggle. 

And what is life to liberty ! What is the loss of 
life to the sacrifice of all we prize dear ! When 
the day comes that merchandise and commerce, 
ofiice and party, a venture for political change 
for the sake of the transfer of political power, 
and the matter of income and interest shall out- 
weigh a high and holy devotion to country, and 
defile its shrine by their consecration as the God 
of America, let the earth lament and the land 
cry out, for, surely, the heaviest of God's judg- 
ments shall be upon the people. 

But we shall not fail. The age, which is an 
age of struggle, will find America rooted to the 
cause of Freedom. The Government may wither 
for a time through the apathy of the people ; the 
Union may be embarrassed, threatened, and ap- 
parently dissolved, through the time-serving and 
cowardly handling of the politician, the timid- 
ity of the press, or the uninterrupted sweep of 
high treason ; but, though shame shall mantle 
the cheek, and we hide the head, as we style our- 
selves Americans, the remnant shall be faithful, 
and all our struggles, however fierce, and all our 
burdens, however vast, shall be as the refiner's 



40 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

fire, to purify the cause, and pusli on tlie career 
of genuine freedom to its ultimate supremacy. 

The Hour which brings the Peril, already de- 
fines the Duty and the Deliverance. 

"We shall not abuse our trust. The exalted 
privilege of leading the nations will not lapse 
from our control. Be not deceived ! The people, 
prone to peace, and dreading the inroad of red 
war more than Pestilence or Famine, are com- 
ing with calm and deliberate minds to that 
sublime but solemn conclusion, that they will 
offer their lives and fortunes, a free-will offering, 
upon the altar of Country, Liberty, and Independ- 
ence. I hear the shackles of party clang as they 
are dashed upon the earth. I see the bonds part 
that bind the devotees of self and mammon. I 
see treasure offered without stint, or limit, to 
purchase back the rights imperilled. In the lull 
which follows the fall of Sumter I see the pre- 
sage of a tempest ! It will gather volume, and 
roll from the East and North and West until you 
shall rejoice in every sacrifice of treasure, and 
glory in every drop of blood expended for the 
public weal; for the whole continent shall be 
free, and the nations of the world shall pay you 
homage. 



THE WAR: ITS NATURE AND PROSPECTS, 
ITS MORAL AND SOCIAL EVILS, AND ITS 
ULTIMATE RESULTS. 



DELIVERED TO THE SOLDIERS OF INDIANA, AT INDI- 
ANAPOLIS, IND., FEBRUARY 22, 1863, WHILE COLONEL 
OF THE 18TH U. S. INFANTRY, COMMANDING THE POST. 



Soldiers of the Republic ! — I greet you, on 
this anniversary day, with fresh assurance that 
the memory of Washington retains its precious- 
ness and power. His offices and trials, his warn- 
ings and his counsels, not only survive his de- 
parture from the scenes of earth, but their vitality 
and force still energize the body politic and in- 
spire the people he established with the senti- 
ments of pure and substantial liberty. His 
panegyric is written in our every-day history. 
Observe its issues, and remember him. 

True it is that the tide of civil prosperity which 
has borne the nation on to unexampled wealth 
and expansion since his departure seems checked 
by the crosses of an unexampled war. True it is 

41 



42 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

that the citizen has left the furrow and the work- 
shop, the desk and the office, for the issues of 
battle. True it is that war rages. From lake 
to gulf, from ocean to ocean, men arm to fight. 
A nation most free, a people most intelligent, a 
community most richly endowed with intellect- 
ual, religious, and physical virus, have directed 
the forum, the pulpit, and their exhaustless wealth 
of material power to the art of destroying life. 
Invention writhes for grander results, that it may 
vanquish or surpass results hitherto attained. 
Sea and land groan beneath the weight of mon- 
strous engines, designed to overthrow the labor 
of the last. In proportion as modern skill had 
gathered up the agencies for that higher type of 
civil life inaugurated by the Fathers, so does 
modern art surpass herself in the supply of 
means to slay and waste. 

Who are the people panoplied for the battle ? 
"What cause has called to arms a mighty nation ? 
Why is treasure offered without stint, and blood 
without measure? Why does the father send 
forth his first-born, and his last-born, then follow 
himself, while mother and wife bid them all alike 
a hearty God-speed? See! All domestic ties 
relax their grasp, freely to surrender the loved 
ones to the embrace of the great destroyer ! 
Marvellous spectacle in this advanced age of 
human progress ! Strange tragedy, wherein a 
nation acts the parts, and the astonished world 



THE OLD WORLD AND h'EW, 43 

shrinks back from the real death which assails 
each character and fills each scene ! 

The people thus panoplied for battle are the 
citizens of the United States of America. They 
are citizens, — self-thinking, self-relying, self-gov- 
erning citizens ! They are neither slaves, nor 
serfs, nor subjects, but co-equals in governing 
and educating the State. Their will is law. 
Their law is the crystallization of their concur- 
rent will. Their country is the matured fruit of 
many generations of self-denying toil. Blood 
has before watered the earth, that they might 
attain their present ability to war. The sacri- 
fices of those generations have culminated in the 
gift of this wonderful faculty to destroy. 

Their country has been the model and admira- 
tion of the world, and no less the terror of all 
who scorn and oppress the citizen. The centre, 
yes, the very heart of the new world yields this 
people life, and all its throbs so energize the 
body politic that each pulsation, more subtle than 
the electric flow, impels all other nations to a 
higher mode of life and culture. 

THE OLD WORLD AND NEW. 

You whom I now address are citizens as well 
as soldiers. You represent the mind as well as 
the muscle and the martial spirit of the nation ! 
Permit me, then, on this sacred day, to glance 
still again at the proportions of this surpassing 



44 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

Commonwealth, and contrast it with other forms 
of civil life, that we may better appreciate its 
value, and may more courageously dare all sac- 
rifices, to hasten that perpetuity which we feel 
and know to be ordained of Providence for the 
union of the States. 

Its founders feared God ! He blessed them ! 
Their sons erected the sanctuary in their villages, 
and the altar by their hearth-stones. Wherever 
in the desert or far-oiF islands of the sea you find 
the word of God, and the praise of God, and their 
blessed fruit, wherever civilization is freshest, 
and human progress the best developed, you will 
find citizens of the United States. Go out over 
the world, if you please, to learn what you can- 
not learn of this people. 

Behold columns, porticos, and temples, now 
in ruins, — ruins of the past. Will thei/ develop 
man ? There is no life nor real grandeur there ! 
Behold the effete and time-worn dynasties that 
faintly imitate the prestige of barbaric times, now 
tottering under the pressure of the subjugated 
people, who yearn and toil and pant for their 
speedy overthrow! Do they develop man, they^ 
whose sphere and fashion soon shall disappear 
before the onward march of man, to assume his 
rightful place upon the earth, as man ? 

What is Art in the old world but the childish 
fondling of old-time fiction or the mythology of 
the ancients ! What is science in the old world 



THE OLD WORLD AND NEW. 45 

but a spasmodic struggle to attain a higher sphere 
than the conditions of their civil life can justify ! 
What is religion in the old world but the worship 
of the mysterious and the old, for mystery's sake, 
and because it is old ! What is invention in the 
old world but a desperate endeavor to rival the 
progress of the new and keep in life the civil 
state which is already overshadowed by the new. 
"What in the old world is old that does not find a 
fresher, better type in the institutions of the 
new ? What in the old world is new^ that has 
not been generated by some precious germ wafted 
across the waters from the new ? What is there 
from all those nations to engraft upon a fresh 
and growing Commonwealth ? What have they 
for your en^^% what for your profit, beyond the 
instructive lessons their histories impart ? 

And yet, how precious are the memories of 
the Fathers ! ]^oble souls were those, to rise even 
in the middle ages, above the level of their times, 
and breathe such holy fragrance upon the land 
that throughout the vales of Italy and of France, 
along the hill-sides of Switzerland and Germany, 
on the plains of Poland and of Hungary, and in 
unnumbered other lesser States, the tree of lib- 
erty sprang up and lived in the very teeth of 
frowning tyrants, i^ay, more ! Let us do honor 
to the long succession of hallowed names which, 
from the earliest date of the Christian epoch, 
maintained, in pure and glowing heat, the embers 



46 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

of the sacred fire, and preserved tliose precious 
leaves of the tree of life, and those holy laws of 
human conduct which made it possible, in after- 
times, for civil freedom to emerge and culminate 
with every passing age. It is 7iot that other na- 
tions could not have sooner burst the bonds of 
feudal power to revivify the earth with the light 
of a pure, pervasive liberty, but that they did not; 
and that this new world was made of Heaven the 
fulcrum point, from which that liberty might work 
back upon the struggling nations of the old. 

And thus it is that this people, now sublimely 
showing forth the greatness of their power and 
the terror of their outstretched arm, can bear the 
stress, and meet the issues here involved. 

THE LOYAL ARE PROSPEROUS. 

I said war rages ! It is the great American 
Republic that is armed for battle. Even her 
children mimic war, and employ for toys the 
sword and drum and trumpet. And yet, with 
all the din of preparation — with all the munifi- 
cence of expended treasure — with all the groan- 
ing arsenals replete with instruments of death — 
with all the array of marching columns and long 
extended fleets, what strange facts are patent to 
us all. The earth labors to outdo herself! The 
granaries burst with plenty. The husbandman 
has no need to garner up for future use, but 
yields his surfeit to other natiorls that are fed by 



WHY THIS WAR. 47 

this. The marts of trade are full of busy life ! 
The loom hums on with undiminished zeal, and 
the steam-sped car, or ship, goes out and comes 
again, with ever expanding and multiplying 
profit. Surely, such a nation has no common 
mission to fulfil ! Surely, this war now waged 
needs but a high and holy impulse to place this 
people on the pinnacle of the earth, a beacon 
light to all, the deliverer of all. 

WHY THIS WAR. 

Why, then, this war ? I need not tread upon 
party issues. I simply recite such pregnant facts 
as point my lesson. It is the oft-told tale of 
human struggle to be free. It is the earnest that 
the citizen Republic will vindicate its origin in 
its perfected destiny. It is the daring venture 
of a great and mighty people to teach all nations 
how other nations failed, and, therein, to peril 
even the national life itself, upon the pledge, to 
make Freedom a fact, and Liberty a personal 
and universal experience. 

The fundamental cause no man denies. The 
maxims of human pride, and the pretensions of 
the few, to make the law for all, which bound 
tight the chains about the patriots of earlier 
times, began to exact their claims upon the 
heritage of the Fathers. That which was abnor- 
mal and strange, in 3i perfect state, but was 
branded upon the national life at its very birth, 



48 CmSIS THOUGHTS. 

began to usurp tlie functions of the State it lived 
upon. The exception, unfortunately induced, 
and unhappily transmitted, assumed to become 
the law, and to dictate the maxims of a Godless, 
cruel age to an age of Christian truth and liberty. 
'Not content with the indulgence of the funda- 
mental law which gave it tolerance, while antici- 
pating its early end, this excrescence of human 
slavery assumed to mould the public shape in 
harmony with its own deformities. Exactions, 
consented to, assumed the tone and place of 
intrinsic rights. Resistance withheld, but tem- 
pered its appetite for new demands. As its por- 
tion of the national substance wasted, under its 
baleful creed, it coveted the richer portion of the 
Commonwealth, and cried, give — give- — until the 
nation, heedless of all former distinctions of 
party or belief, cried out, with an united voice, 
" Thus far, and no farther, shalt thou go. Here 
shall thy proud waves be stayed." 

Then came outspoken, bold, and defiant asser- 
tions of the true character of its mission, in a 
land of liberty, to rule all or ruin all. The Con- 
stitution, so long invoked as its protector, was 
derided and despised ! Treason stalked in high 
places, and rude arms were stretched out to 
tear down the pillars of a nation's pride. What 
matter that the Republic outvied the world in 
power and glory! What matter that our com- 
merce led all nations ! Wliat matter that, stand- 



I 



WHY THIS WAR. 49 

ing between botli oceans, we held the keys of 
both oceans and the continents they laved ! What 
matter that the world was fed at our hands, and 
that American invention had furnished the mo- 
tive power of all human progress, and the vehicle 
for the electric flow of human thought ! "What 
matter that here was an asylum for the weary, 
worn-out exile from despotic climes ; that here 
JReligion had her altars ; Education her throne ; 
and Purity and moral health pervaded the civil 
and the social life ! 

All these (never so prosperous when freedom 
is suppressed) were so many galling proofs of the 
goodness and preciousness of the nation's life. 
These, all these, were living, breathing, speaking 
warnings to forbear. But, no ! Even the pres- 
ence of the nation's flag, the garb of the nation's 
soldier, the ermine of the nation's judge, the 
footsteps of a brother, coming from a State 
intact by the leprosy that was working in the 
vitals of the weaker and oflended part, was as 
wormwood, to be cast out. 

The vindication of authority, was miscalled 
force. The issue of legal process, was an usurpa- 
tion upon vested rights. The protection of the 
nation's flag, and giving sustenance to the na- 
tion's soldier starving in a beleaguered fort, was 
considered war upon an independent State : until 
Sumter — synonymous with the glory of our war 
for Il^ational Independence, and to be known in 

3 



50 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

future annals as the beacon spot from which 
gleamed forth the fires of universal Liberty — 
surrenderedy but without disgrace, Wlien, from 
its rampartSy the flag of freedom disappeared, 
Freedom herself mourned not ! The earth, in- 
deed, trembled as her sons rushed to arms ! Such 
power as no monarch ever boasted responded to 
her cry ! But she, rising to the clouds, took new 
inspiration from the Infinite, as the good Angel 
of Providence was permitted to unfold the issues 
of the coming struggle. She beheld a nation, 
loving peace, give up the sweet luxury of peace 
to fight for truth and liberty. She saAV the bonds 
of party untwine and estranged brothers harmo- 
nize for the public weal. She beheld annies 
marshalled, battles lost and won, the faithful and 
the faithless alike to fall upon the field of strife ! 
She beheld the sacrifice of noble souls and count- 
less treasure ! She heard the widow's wail and 
the orphan's cry ! She saw campaigns begun 
and ended, and men's hearts to fail them, while 
still they struggled on ! She beheld new and 
still newer sacrifices, hour by hour, and day by 
day, through weary months or years, until a 
nation, invincible against the world in arms, 
seemed prostrate at the feet of the rebellious 
few. She knew, full Vv^ell, that Liberty must 
surely triumph, and that every waste of life or 
treasure would only prove the value of the prize 
to be attained at last. And such will be the issue 



A WORD TO THE PEOPLE. 51 

of tlie war we wage. Faint not ! Doubt not ! 
Vast in expenditure, vast in its sacrifices, vast 
in its desolations, still more vast and over- 
shadowing in its results to the human race, 
will be this present, this expanding war. 

A WORD TO THE PEOPLE. 

Soldiers, were my voice to reach the people, I 
would say, Statesmen, you who love the Constitu- 
tion of your Fathers, and the institutions they 
so dearly purchased, cheerfully labor with your 
counsels and your hands ! Partisans, of what- 
ever name, however you differ in minor points, 
gird up your loins for the final issue ! Citizens 
of the great Republic, you whose power is the 
State, and whose will is the law of the State, 
dash away all doubts, for you again shall be citi- 
zens of a restored and undivided commonwealth. 
Church of Christ, praise God that you live in the 
culminating age of human progress, when your 
prayers and praises, your self-denials and your 
labors, but herald forth the coming day when 
Liberty and Religion shall govern the earth, and 
prophecy shall be eclipsed by the glories of glad 
fruition. 

But that day has not dawned. You will be 
called to meet many grave responsibilities first. 
War, however just and holy, has its penalties. 
"While, therefore, you fight on, for a generation 
if need be, to vanquish this unholy rebellion, you 



52 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

must not forget nor underestimate its tendencies 
and dangers. 

Peace is the true destiny of the American 
people. 

Your institutions are founded upon Peace. 
Your industry and your learning, your philos- 
ophy and your religion, all expand in times of 
peace, and dwarf amid the alarms of war. The 
social life will palsy, the currents of sin will 
course more freely, and the dangers to the com- 
monwealth are then more serious, hecause their 
progress is overlooked or slighted amid the stir- 
ring pageants of a great and overshadowing war. 
Crime, that would shock the most hardened, 
stalks holdly forth ! Vice, that would make of 
man an outcast, becomes too common for notice. 
Excitement breeds upon itself; and the unwonted 
stimulus of the public pulse draws new fever from 
every source that can intoxicate the mind. You 
iDonder, tolerate, pardon, because it is a time of war. 
'Now is the time for the good citizen and Chris- 
tian to bestir himself, lest God in judgment shall 
protract the struggle. Because restraint is re- 
laxed and rein is given to appetite, never with- 
hold your zeal to conserve the interests of a 
peaceful life. You cannot, indeed, repress an 
excited pulse ; you cannot stand still as the whirl- 
wind wraps you in its folds; but you can do 
better : anticipate its coming, that you may give 
direction to the current and provide against its 



THE RESULT CERTAIN. 53 

ravages. Strange as it may seem, your hearts, 
once so keen to sympathize with human sorrow, 
and so respectful to the passing bier, will grow 
callous, and your ear will deafen to the cry of 
human anguish. In the incessant call upon your 
patience and your pity, you will often doubt the 
merit of the suppliant, and turn away from the 
wail of the desolate. But rise to the merit of 
the pending struggle. Remember that you, as a 
people, are an example to the race. You, your 
sons, your brothers, and your friends, fight for 
universal Liberty. Your sacrifices are for man, 
as man, no less than for those who have gone 
forth to the battle. 

THE RESULT CERTAIN. 

Sublime and grand will be the history of this 
war, if, as now, with united prayers and energy, 
the whole people resolutely, faithfully, and in the 
face of no matter what disaster, still fight on. 
But, faith in great principles, assurance of glad 
issues, and anticipations of ultimate and conclu- 
sive triumphs, will not meet the obligations that 
belong to every-day life. This war, so holy, so 
inevitable, so indispensable, in the providence of 
God, to the elimination of the gold from the 
dross, and the establishment of a model civil 
State, has practical duties additional to those 
already referred to. 



54 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 



YOUR ENEMY. 

You war with no common enemy. They are 
of your own blood, and they know how to fight. 
Because they fight to destroy, and you fight to 
maintain J the unity of the States, is no reason 
why they should shrink from your steel, or wilt 
as your flag flashes over your advancing columns. 
They have passed that point, and flght more des- 
perately than in a holier cause. You peril much, 
but they not only peril all, but destroy all rather 
than your victory should find anything better 
than their lands and streams for your recovery. 
They gather old and young to feed the flame of 
battle. They waste and ruin ! Yet they wither 
under the despotism they establish, and are even 
now on the verge of bankruptcy, utter and re- 
morseless ; while their rulers still drive them 
down the current. 

This brings no joy to us ; but when we feel our 
sinews stiffen, when we see the loyal States so 
prosperous, when we realize that in no great 
measure have we exercised our powers, we know 
that a swift, hearty, and united outpouring of the 
infinite resources at our command, by land and 
sea, would end the struggle, and restore the 
nation to a better and more enduring phase of 
civil life. 



YOUR TRIALS AND DANGERS. 55 



YOUR TEIALS AND DANGERS. 

With all the general prosperity and thrift 
that surrounds and vivifies the loyal States, you 
should not forget, as soldiers or citizens, how 
many evils ahound, nor how jealously you should 
guard your character and life. You must prove 
how a great Christian people can war, and yet 
rise ahove the contingencies of war. You must 
learn that you will endure and suffer, hut that, 
therein, may he found your grandest victories. 

Let me candidly speak of some of those evils, 
that we may meet them squarely face to face. 

The Expenditure of Life not wasted. 

And first : there must he great flow of human 
life ! Youth, who 'are the sole representatives 
of names and households, will perish with them. 
Perish, did I say? ISTo, never! Their hlood 
shall invigorate the tree of liberty, and their 
comrades and friends will call them blessed. 
But there will be great flow of human life. The 
intelligent and gifted will fall, and their place 
must be filled by others. The sick, the wasted, 
and the down-broken will be so much prolific 
life lost to the body politic, and a generation will 
repeat the waste in unnumbered types and forms. 
All this will try you as a people. 



56 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

Increase of Taxation a Test of your Patriotism, 

Again. The burdens of civil life, in the sup- 
port of the government you love, will press more 
heavily upon those who survive the issue of the 
war. Taxation will increase. The cost of your 
franchises will he enhanced, and your patriotism 
will he put to a sterling test. You may feel rest- 
less under new demands ; for it is a law of your 
nature, and you cannot help it. You will he 
almost tempted to abuse the Providence which 
has jarred the even course of a peaceful life, and 
crossed your schemes of gain or comfort. But 
no change, based upon discontent, or a faltering 
love of country, under whatever sacrifices, can 
improve your lot. The government which claims 
your support is your government, and its interests 
are yours. Perfection of administration or policy 
belong not to man. Labor on steadfastly for the 
common good, and many years shall not pass 
by until every sacrifice shall be a theme of glad 
thanksgiving. Compare your civil blessings, 
under all these trials, with those of other nations, 
and you will find no weight of obligation too 
heavy for endurance, and no burden so vast that 
you cannot survive its pressure. 

There will he Suffering. 

Other burdens, no less weighty, will be added 
to those already referred to. Poverty and mis- 



YOUR TRIALS AND DANGERS. 57 

ery will come to many door-stones to plead for 
adequate relief. The widows, whose husbands 
have fallen ; the mothers, who have consecrated 
their sons to their country's cause, and who, sad 
and comfortless, bemoan their loss, will look for 
some practical test of the nation's estimate of the 
rights their sacrifices secured. It would be a 
burning shame, while any live in luxury, and 
have means to spare, that such as these should 
suffer, or have cause to regret the sacrifice en- 
dured. In the high tide of an excited public 
pulse sacrifice is light and easily endured. There 
is a pride in being recognized before the world 
as prompt to answer to the public call, which too 
often carries away the judgment and the brains. 
But when desolation comes to the lonely house- 
hold — when the staff of support is broken — ^when 
penury creeps in at the windows, and no com- 
forting friend treads upon the threshold, the lot 
is bitter and the home wretched. See, you, that 
no such homes abound, if your hand can extend 
relief. Food to the hungry, clothing to the 
naked, solace to the mourning, and the sweet 
balm of sympathy to the downcast and wasting, 
will turn their lot into a lot of blessing; and 
their hearts will rejoice in every drop of blood 
vouchsafed to preserve the nation's liberties. 
Kind words cost nothing ! They are a solace 
that no sorrowing heart rejects. They bless the 
recipient. They soften and humanize and ele- 



58 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

vate the giver. They partake, in nature, of those 
ministering spirits who soar above the earth to 
bless the pure and holy in their sorrows and 
their cares, and speed their flight, at last, to a 
better land, where care and sorrow are no more. 

Temptations of the Soldier. 

But the increased weight of governmental 
obligation, the waste of life, the increase of 
poverty and domestic sorrows, are not the only 
issues from this war that test your fitness to 
transmit the inheritance of the fathers to those 
who are to follow you. Already have I hinted 
at a more melancholy result of the waste and 
mischief of a protracted war. 

War, which transforms the citizen into the 
soldier, gives new scope and force to the human 
passions. He who was an orderly, quiet man at 
home, and who was loved for his goodness, gen- 
tleness, and grace, becomes, of necessity, inured 
to deeds of daring and blood. He who was 
reverent, sincere, and pure, is brought in contact 
with the profane, the licentious, and the vile. 
He whose highest pride was to deserve the favor 
of his household, his neighbors, and his God, is 
overwhelmed by the inevitable associations of the 
camp ; and, by the very force of continued press- 
ure, is tempted to follow the lead of those who 
scoff and deride the holy and the pure. He, 
whose seat was never vacant in the house of 



FOUR TRIALS AND DANGERS. 59 

prayer, forgets there is a Sabbath. He, whose 
party or social fealty was but a synonyrde with 
unconditioned patriotism and truth, too often 
takes up the law of license, and ignores the 
rights of all, if he but acquire the power. Ac- 
countability for his acts, as a soldier in the field, 
is recognized, because the law of his new life is 
inexorable and straight. But accountability for 
his social life is too often deferred until he shall 
return again to social life. He, who was sober, 
chaste, and temperate, takes up the social dram, 
becomes the prey of monsters in the human 
shape, degrades himself, destroys his better na- 
ture, and ruin is his portion. 

Even here, surrounded by the associations of 
well-ordered, social life, how soon the enlisted 
man is tempted to put off the manners of the 
citizen, and don the independence of the soldier. 
They who have visited this Capital, at fair, festi- 
val, or party jubilee, now feel free to engage in 
pleasures which would have shocked their moral 
sense a year, or even a few months, ago. This 
is not strange. The soldier is habitually gener- 
ous, sharing all things in common with the com- 
rades of his mess ; exposed to like dangers, and 
assimilated in daily habit by the identity of pur- 
pose and pursuit, they are no less one in all that 
relieves the routine of daily duty, and cheers the 
monotony of a garrison or campaign life. 

You see a citizen staggering on the street, or 



60 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

feel an offensive thrust, or become the object of 
a sneer, a laugh, or insulting word, and you are 
disgusted or incensed. But, to the soldier, you 
involuntarily extend your charity and sympathy. 
In hiyn, it is treated as the explosion of a little 
surplus spirit, which expends itself in objec- 
tionable forms, but only lasts until the bugle 
calls, or the drum recalls him to his post. The 
citizen you look upon as ruined. You half par- 
don the soldier, and feel meanly if you take 
oiFence. And let it be remembered, that the 
mean and sordid do not go to war to risk their 
lives for others, or others' rights. The prompt- 
ings to the field have not the stimulus of fortune- 
hunting, and few men enlist to better their pecu- 
niary lot. The impulses that have filled the 
ranks in the present war, have, for the most part, 
been such as do honor to the human heart. 
Heart-rending partings have been fewer; gen- 
erous, free-hearted surrenders of loved ones to 
their country's call, have been more abundant 
than in any war since the sacred wars of Israel, 
generations before the birth of Christ. And yet, 
the elements of a free and open-handed nature, 
no less prove the soldier's danger and the mag- 
nitude of responsibility devolved upon every 
citizen. A kind word may subdue the ruffled 
temper. A sweet whisper of home may curb 
the excited passion. A hearty assurance of 
earnest wishes for his highest good may re- 



YOUR TRIALS AND DANGERS. 61 

establish the yielding spirit, and restore that 
trembling moral balance, which, once lost, is too 
often lost for ever. 

Yon know, and I need not remind you, how 
one short year ago even the firm man of business 
dropped the tear of unexplained sympathy, when 
the first train of armed young men went forth 
to the untried field. You remember how they 
were followed with substantial tokens of your 
sympathy and respect ! Are the fountains ex- 
hausted by that overflow ? Are the sources of 
your plenty dried up by those generous benefac- 
tions ? Or, rather, in your safe and quiet homes, 
have you become indifferent to their departure, 
and so familiarized with the steady tramp and 
the martial strains that you forget their dangers 
and their destiny when the battalions turn upon 
another street ? There is homely truth in this 
belief. It takes a strong nature, thoroughly im- 
bued with the grace and love of God, or with no- 
ble sympathies and a ceaseless flow of patriotism 
and love for your fellow-man, to maintain this 
protracted draft upon the human heart. 

Have I colored the picture too highly ? l!^ay, 
deepen the colors, intensify the outlines, and you 
shall never overestimate the sad tendencies of 
an extended, protracted war. It is easier to 
yield to a current of human pleasure than reso- 
lutely to stem it. To yields has the prestige, and 
is grateful to the natural heart. To resist requires 



62 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

philosophy, courage, principle. Many a youth 
has fought a gallant fight against his country's 
foes, who lacked the courage to control himself. 
Many a youth whose cheek once mantled at the 
rihald song, and who staggered, at the heaven- 
defying oath, has learned to hear with patience 
and without rehuke, if not to join the chorus, or 
repeat the oath. If such prove the tendencies of 
service in the field, what shall we say of their 
reflex influence upon the State. How strong is 
the impulse of the disabled, discharged, or de- 
serted to re-live, in social and civil sphere, the 
form of life they led when free from their re- 
straints. How strict the restraints of home and 
law must seem to those whose interior and 
external life alike (beyond the range of military 
rule) have been so different from the ethics of a 
well-balanced, peaceful State. But when thou- 
sands multiply by tens, and the million of men 
now clad in martial vestments shall return to the 
homestead and the ballot-box, how supremely 
wise and well-ordered must be the common- 
wealth which shall reassimilate their natures to 
its peaceful sphere, and soothe their redundant 
passions with the flow of overmastering goodness 
and moral force. 

OUR NOBLE ARMY. 

True it is that no army ever stood in battle 
so doubly armed with a cause so just. I^o 



A WORD TO PARTIES. ^3 

country hitherto sent forth so many of her 
choicest sons to her defence. Never were so 
many of the good, the holy, and the pure, found 
battling with a nation's foes. J^ever did so many 
blessings attend, never did so many prayers fol- 
low an armed force, as have accompanied and 
followed the soldiers to this war. Thousands 
will return to enjoy with zest the luxuries of 
peace. The sanctuary will be thronged by 
kneeling forms blessing the God of battles, who 
hath given them their victory, and brought them 
out of all their troubles. But thousands more 
will gain no purification by the ordeal of arms, 
and society itself must be their restorer before 
they can again become her blessing. 

A WORD TO PARTIES. 

Keep, then, the social state alive with your 
most unselfish, earnest efforts. Let parties, 
which must always exist, and whose very vari- 
ance is the balance-wheel to give steady motion 
to the civil mechanism that moves the State, 
base all their zeal upon the fundamental laws of 
righteousness and truth. Let learned and un- 
learned, all crafts and callings, combine to con- 
serve those sacred laws which, under God's 
blessing, will make even of war a refining fire, 
as it is the most trying test of a people's liberty. 

Undaunted by the future, hopeful of results, 
strive together while your brethren are in arms 



64 CEISIS THOUGHTS. 

to deepen respect for religion and for law. Let 
the returning thousands be cheered by the con- 
trasts, so that crime shall shrink before their 
martial footsteps, and under your goodly offices 
they shall rejoice in the fruit which the well- 
nurtured tree of liberty so generously bestows 
upon all who respect her laws. 

And you, who are so exposed to temptation of 
such varied forms, how shall I here warn you to 
guard the beginnings of the evils that assail the 
soldier's life ? Believe me, that vice is not made 
honorable by its repetition or the number of its 
votaries. A soldier swearing — and, alas, how 
common ! — presents the most fearful specimen 
of this offence against good taste and the laws of 
God. He, whose support alone protects him in 
the field of strife, is insulted and defied. The 
heart is hardened, the manner brutalized, and 
the manhood degraded. You never knew a man 
honestly proud of his proficiency in swearing. 
Never try ayiy thing in which it is not a cause of pride 
that you become expert. Keep your self-respect, and 
you never ivill be a coward. Be chaste and tem- 
perate, and you will be sound and courageous. 
In personal habits and every form of the interior 
life of man, as man, adorn your character, as a 
soldier, with all the best attributes of the peaceful, 
genuine, honored citizen. 



GENERAL ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL EVIL. 65 



GENEKAL ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL EVIL. 

A great war tends to centralization of power, national 
arrogance, and the absorption of civil rights in the 
necessities of a military rule. 

A war which, directs the mechanical and in- 
dustrial arts to its support, a war which, hy its 
great expansion, appeals directly to the national 
love of ascendency over other nations, a war, like 
the present, which, while internal in its cause 
and operations, is nevertheless general in its 
physical elFects upon the industry of all nations, 
is fraught with substantial dangers to the com- 
monwealth itself. 

In the first place, you become the object of 
widespread jealousy, if not hate. While good 
men and lovers of liberty the world over rejoice 
in all that develops liberty, it is far otherwise 
with those powerful dynasties which habitually 
suppress the gush of free instincts, and use the 
State for individual aggrandizement alone. 

Your institutions invite assault. Their very 
existence doubles the guard of half the continental 
powers. Your living example speaks to all 
nations of a future for themselves. For nearly 
one hundred years the popular revolutions of the 
old world have found sympathy in the United 
States, and have been vitalized and refreshed by 
the assurance of your success. Within a single 
year your inventive genius has wellnigh dis- 



66 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

armed the naval fleets of Britain and of France. 
They will do for transports. They may be recon- 
structed and adapted to some of the purposes of 
war. With most desperate energy the machine- 
shops and dock-yards of those great rival States 
are laboring, night and day, to make them useful 
in some such forms. That naval duel upon the 
waters of Hampton Roads, which sank the Cum- 
berland and Congress, had wider range of scope 
and mischief than you at first supposed. The 
halls of the Monitor which glanced from the walls of 
the Merrimac, penetrated the hulk of every European 
fleet. The sloping sides of the Merrimac, which 
deflected the balls of the Monitor, at the same 
time resisted all projectiles that European skill 
had yet devised. The Merrimac, doomed in the 
charge of traitors, went to her own fate. The 
Monitor has also passed away, but her many con- 
sorts float on, the fear of traitors and the spectre 
to disturb the sleep of despots. 

Europe flies to new expenditures of treasure to 
restore her naval power and prestige. But this 
involuntary tribute to your skill is not a gracious 
tribute. The admiration it inspires is not afiec- 
tionate nor fraternal. It is the sentiment of the 
fencer or boxer, who finds his rival to be en- 
dowed with more cunning skill and more endur- 
ing muscle. He strives the more to improve 
himself that he may have better chance of future 
victory. 



GENERAL ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL EVIL. 67 

The leading European nations, constantly on a 
war basis, and wasting the bulk of their annual 
revenue in preparation for uncertain war ; those 
nations, so faithless of their own position that 
they must prop up the State by a continual pa- 
rade of armaments and arms ; those nations, so 
suspicious of each other that continued peace is 
never the assurance of a new-year's birth, are not, 
cannot be, your sincere and disinterested friends. 
While you only advanced in the arts of peace 
and domestic virtue ; while you fed them, clothed 
them, and supplied them with newly-invented 
arms and skilful forms of mechanism, of which 
you were slow to profit, they could easily endure 
you. ITot so, when they must warp all their best 
resources from other channels to hold even pace 
with you in physical power and progress. ISlor 
upon the sea alone has the descendant of the 
Puritan, the Cavalier, and the Huguenot equalled 
the modern European in the art of war. Nearly 
two millions of well-armed men have stood pan- 
oplied for battle upon American soil within a 
period less than half the duration of your last 
war with England. And, even that force, so 
vast, could be renewed, and still the nation would 
survive. Do those foreign States suspend their 
blows in the faint hope that the opposing sec- 
tions will lash each other until they will become 
an easy prey, or too insignificant and feeble for 
fear or envy ? liow long will their affected for- 



68 CmSIS THOUGHTS. 

bearance last? And will not the unnumbered 
taunts they hurl, and the menaces they periodi- 
cally repeat, stir up a spirit on this side the waters 
that will need firm restraint, if you would avoid 
the issue of a w^orld-wide war ? 

True it is that a world-wide war may flow from 
the issues of this. The principles for which we 
contend have their leaven deep down in the or- 
ganism of every social State, and ultimately must 
triumph in every State. But let us not hasten 
the general conflict, but wisely await our coming 
destiny. 

DANGER FROM EXCESSIVE MILITARY DEVELOPMENT. 

The attainment of military power, and the 
promise of military ascendency, develop in any 
people a strong tendency to use that power, and 
assert that ascendency over neighboring States, 
and to rush heedlessly into extended wars for 
selfish aggrandizement and glory. Military at- 
tainments, titles, and stations become fixed, and 
afibrd new avenues to place and power. Means 
are looked upon as ends, and this very military 
capacity, which should operate only as a subord- 
inate instrumentality to insure security in the 
pursuits and habitudes of peace, is loved for 
itself and the honor it is supposed to impart. 
Of all lessons to be recognized and felt, the most 
difficult is this, that all force which society em- 
ploys for its perpetuation or support, is identical 



EXCESSIVE MILITARY DEVELOPMENT. g9 

and subsidiary, not paramount to, the civil in- 
terests of the State itself. Many a leader has 
started out, as did Rienzi, the last of the Roman 
Tribunes, with holy aims and patriotic zeal, who 
could not lay his armor down at the feet of the 
people, when the legitimate work was done, but 
has made of the people's confidence a throne to 
mount upon. Not so, Washington. 

While the ability of a nation to defend itself 
is a substantial preventive against a needless war, 
its excessive development of a military taste is 
no less fraught with incentives to such a war. 

As for the United States, it should be remem- 
bered that you have warded oiF attack when you 
had neither armies nor navies that would afford 
adequate defence. The best defensive armor of a 
just and mighty people is their justice. They stand 
serene amid the shock of arms, envied by all, re- 
spected by all. ^N'one wish to add them to their 
list of foes. All feel that the existence of such a 
State is large security to all against the assaults 
of each. Nations, armed to the verge of insol- 
vency and ruin, pause before they hurl the gaunt- 
let and wage battle for uncertain issues. And, 
besides this, so intermingled are the commercial 
relations of modern nations; so subtle are the 
laws of affinity, language, education, and re- 
ligion, that already the world seems tacitly con- 
formed to the idea that war must be the last 
resort. But for the fear of the people, and the 



70 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

emancipation of the people, armies would dis- 
solve, and only a sufficient force would be main- 
tained to insure respect and give force to the 
civil arm. 

Ambitious men love power for power's sake, 
as often as to secure a higher stand-point for 
doing good; but America should never be the 
prize or plaything of such as these. Her funda- 
mental law is the law of peace. Religion, the 
true basis of our institutions and our progress, 
teaches us her sweet lessons of peace. Her con- 
quests are the purest and most complete, and the 
social fabric that rests upon her maxims will be 
immovable as the mountains, and its glory will 
pierce the heavens. Under peaceful sway the 
sanctuary and the school-house, the work-shop 
and the warehouse, the desk and the forum, and 
every type of human advancement, alike develop 
their intrinsic capacity to bless the nation and to 
work in full harmony with man's nature, and 
with a just adaptation to his better destiny. 

To restore our country to such a peace, and in 
a new and more lasting union to draw fresh life 
from the institutions of the Fathers, we wage 
this war. The vastness of the outlay is only 
equalled by the priceless good to be attained. 
The sacrifices we endure, measured in the flight 
of coming years, will seem as nothing when com- 
pared with the mercies that shall be in store for 
us, if wa push forward in the fear of Grod, meet 



EXCESSIVE MILITARY DEVELOPMENT. 71 

His requirements, and prove equal to our assigned 
position among the nations of the earth. 

All this waste of life, ih^^Q financial burdens, these 
bereavements, this social disorder, and their tenden- 
cies to ignore the normal laws that give the State 
its being and its value, will only prove the value 
of the State itself and purify its functions for a 
wider range of efficiency and blessing ! Selfish- 
ness, or indifterence, jealousies of party antago- 
nism, may protract the struggle. E'ew disasters 
may try your faith, and you may almost despair 
of safe deliverance out of these w^oes. You and 
I may not survive the struggle. Our fathers 
fought seven years for Liberty and Independ- 
ence. You may be called of Providence to 
serve a double term of trial. Hecatombs of vic- 
tims may be offered upon the same consecrated 
altars, and every household may wither as the 
blast of storm sweeps on ; but in the day w^hen 
men's hearts fail them, and desolation and bar- 
barism seem to dawn upon this most blessed age 
for man to live and labor in, the remnant shall 
be faithful and they shall find a sure deliverance. 

Go out, then, and take courage. Bind up the 
wounds of the bleeding ; comfort the fatherless 
and the widow; pour the oil of gladness upon 
the sick and wasting heart. Deal gently with 
the erring. Cast him not off an outcast ! Re- 
member how much he has suffered, how much 
he has been tempted. Remember the absent 



72 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

soldier ! He fights and bleeds for jou ! This is 
no sentimental fiction. His arm has kept your fire- 
sides intact of the enemy. Your fields have not been 
sivept by fire or consuming armies. Your lands are 
not exhausted of their products. Your rivers are 
not closed to commerce, nor yonr shops to the 
bnsy life of trade. Your sanctuaries are open. 
Your Sabbath is sacred. Your halls of learning 
are only closed that their votaries may give their 
energies to the great struggle. 

Thank God, and move on ! True, you have no 
great and boasting allies to share the task you 
have commenced ; but, by the memory of the 
Fathers, whose spirits hover in the air, to bless 
your last great struggle for independence and 
the rights of man, move on ! True ; blood flows ; 
treasure disappears ; moaning and wailing abound 
in the land ; but, blood it was that redeemed man, 
and by blood shall the nation be purified and exalted to 
her rightful place among the nations. 

INDIANA. 

If I have said anything to inspire the tempted 
soldier with new sentiments of self-respect, to 
stimulate his pride of country and his courage, in 
this great battle for freedom, I shall be content. 
All this seems superfluous to Indiana troops. 
If I were disposed to commend you, I could 
say, that although a stranger here, six months 
ago, I am already knit to you by many grateful 



INDIANA. 73 

ties. Indiana ! where else is there so much just 
pride in those who have left their native State to 
battle for the Commonwealth ! Indiana ! where 
else have legions sprang forth so promptly at 
each successive call ! Indiana ! where else has 
a name become a svnonyme of victory ! 

Is it where the mistress of waters spreads wide 
her robes to greet the waters of the gulf? Is it 
upon some narrow island on the coast, where 
floods and tempests have wellnigh submerged 
the valiant band, or, where, floating across the 
adjoining waters, an island fortress is to be 
stormed and captured ? Burnside, son of Indi- 
ana, pauses amid the tempest, and smiles amid 
the flight of unnumbered bullets to greet his 
Indiana boys, and bid them on to conquest ! Is 
it before the walls of Yorktown or the hei2:hts of 
Richmond ; at Sharpsburg, Manassas, or Antietam ; 
at Rich Mountain, Carnifax, or Cumberland; at 
Columbus, Donelson, or Shiloh f Ah ! yes ; it is 
there, everywhere ! ^ast. West, North, South ! 
WhercA^er Indiana sends forth her sons at all, 
she sends them forth to fight and conquer. Her 
banners are shattered and ragged ! Her battal- 
ions are thinned out and wasted! Her name, 
which is legion, is everywhere resounded, yet 
never will retreat or dishonor. 

But I am not here, now, to congratulate Indi- 
ana. She has done well, and deserves more than 
I can render. 

4 



74 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

I talk to you to-day upon sad and solemn 
themes. Ovenvhelming responsibilities are on 
us as a nation. Unexampled sacrifices have 
been, and will be our lot. We shall pass through 
narrow straits, where overhanging dangers prom- 
ise ruin on either side. But look — He who notes 
the sparrow's fall; He who cares for the mi- 
nutest organism that deep down in the caverns 
of the earth has had its life and its enjoyment; 
He who guides the path, and guards the destiny 
of the minutest created thing that floats in the 
water-drop, or peoples the air we breathe as 
truly as He wheels the universe of worlds in their 
appointed course, has never failed, and will never 
fail, to bless the highest order of created things 
— Man — ^in His own image born, when he boldly 
pursues the path that leads to virtue, truth, and 
liberty. 

I see, coming, foretold by Him who cannot lie, 
a time of Peace ; and, still beyond, a time of un- 
exampled peace and righteousness ! The earth, so 
long the stage where every unholy passion has 
been expressed, and where the ravages of sin 
have made a charnel h^buse of Paradise, and of 
this round orb, once shaped for the blissful resi- 
dence of an unsinful race, a spot for angels to 
look upon with tears of pain and pity, shall be 
redeemed. The price, most precious, has been 
paid ! War shall put off her vestments, and 
convert her means of torture to the happy uses 



INDIANA. 75 

of a perpetual peace. Peace shall multiply her 
mercies, until the earth shall wonder that her 
reign has not always been a universal reign. 
Joy and gladness shall fill each beating heart, 
and man shall appear again, as in the Eden of 
the past, the companion of his Creator and the 
Angels. There shall be music then. Banners 
shall float from every hill-top, and wave over 
the heads of the blessed ; but the music shall be 
the outburst of pure and happy hearts, and the 
banners that wave over that restored and ran- 
somed people, shall be the banners of an un- 
wasting and perpetual love. 

One word more before I close. I have spoken 
of this war in its extent^ its dangers^ its sacrifices, 
and its future. I have glanced at your position 
as a nation among the nations, and your illimit- 
able resources for good to the race. I have 
drawn upon that distant future for the glorious 
issues that shall flow from all these present ills. 
I was tempted to pause, and draw a picture of 
the nation at the feet of the rebellious States, and see 
how that vision would meet your favor and support. 
What a spectacle that would be ! The Missis- 
sippi closed at any whim of a hostile power ; the 
Ohio lined with forts and alive with fleets ; the 
border, a chain of custom-posts, and i/ou indebted 
to & foreign State for leave to travel to the Gulf; 
an ever-widening breach of interests and aims ; 
doubled armies, and ever-increasing cost, that 



76 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

you might not become tlie prey of sudden inroads 
or unprovoked assaults; the Gulf, itself, an inland 
sea, in another's grasp, to cut you off from the 
Pacific and its infinite range of wealth and power ; 
the natural outlets of your commerce the sport 
of any who should chance to take ofience at 
your principles or your polity ! But no ! The 
absurdities of anything less than a straightfor- 
ward fight to restore the Union of the Fathers, 
at any cost, is never dreamed of, except in the 
brains of those who, having nothing to gain of a 
free and united people, would risk your ruin to 
make some capital of your dissensions or your 
fall. 

Soldiers ! Citizens ! ! you know no such word as 
fail! You know no such article as disunion! It 
has no market here at any price ! 

Lexington and Bunker Hill belong to Indi- 
ana! YoRKTOWN and ]^ew Orleans belong to 
Indiana. You will cherish them, and cherish 
them for ever ! You will not deal tenderly with 
the burglar while he assails your throat ! You 
will not buy your own peace, if he will only take 
your family and your all ! They, who have ruth- 
lessly assailed the nation's life, will not find you 
more facile and placable, until they renounce 
their arms and return with penitence and new 
allegiance to the once honored union of their 
love. 

I close. God Almighty fights for those who 



INDIANA. 77 

fight for Him. If it be for His glory, and the 
glory of the race ; if it be the spirit of His teach- 
ings and His law ; if it be the choice of angels 
and the spirits of the blest ; if it be the prayer of 
the Fathers who bend down from heaven to mark 
the issue of this war; of Washington himself; 
that a thorough and pervasive civil liberty, a pure 
and life-imparting Christianity, a general and 
well-diffused intelligence, the cultivation of the 
highest type of manhood through the head and 
through the heart, shall perish, and the world 
recede for centuries, to be restored only through 
new sacrifices and oceans of blood; then, and not 
till then, will you fail in this struggle. 

You will fight on. Be true to your flag ! You 
fight for liberty. You will triumph. 

Then, when the war shall be over, there shall 
be no household in the land of which it shall be 
said, with the finger pointed, that its name was 
not represented in the great war for Independ- 
ence ; and no cheek shall tingle with shame when 
it be said his name is borne on no battle roll ; 
but at every even-tide, in every home and ham- 
let, there shall be joy and glad thanksgiving, 
that to it, in part, belongs the Restoration of 
American Liberty and the Deliverance of Man. 



KIND WORDS TO COLORED CITIZENS UPON 
THE RELIGIOUS, EDUCATIONAL, SOCIAL, 
AND PERSONAL DUTY OF THEIR RACE. 



DELIVERED AT THE DEDICATION OF A CHURCH 
EDIFICE FOR COLORED CITIZENS, WHILE TEMPORA- 
RILY ON DUTY AT INDIANAPOLIS, JUNE 17, 1869. 



In accordance with tlie desire of tliese colored 
citizens who are erecting a new house for Divine 
worship, and who believe that a few words of 
counsel from me will aid the enterprise and stimu- 
late their aspiration to grow strong, in all the 
elements which give value to personal character, 
I have so far departed from a settled repugnance 
to speak publicly upon any subject, since the war, 
as to consent to this familiar talk upon themes 
that press immediately upon your condition and 
your prospects for the future. 

My profession, as you know, does not occupy, 
nor aspire to occupy, the field of party politics 
or general oratory ; and yet no calling whatever, 
can entirely absolve any Christian man from the 
ever present obligation to use influence and 

79 



80 CEISIS THOUGHTS. 

strength, at all proper times, in giving impulse 
and sanction to sucli moral and religious agencies 
as are material to the well-being and advance- 
ment of others. 

I can well see that to the colored people of the 
United States the present is a transition period 
of great importance. It is a period wherein they 
have much to learn and much to do. Upon the 
spirit, courage, ambition, and purity of motive 
with which they labor, will largely depend the 
public estimate of their fitness for enlarged fran- 
chises ; and, on the other hand, it is certain that 
if they accept national blessings with passive in- 
difference, they will go backward, instead of 
forward, in all essential elements of civilized 
growth and culture. 

There have been recent statements in the public 
press that in some parts of the South, where the 
restraints of the former social condition have 
passed away, there has been a partial revival of 
superstitions and usages which are essentially 
grovelling, brutish, and heathenish. While you 
cannot but regret, with others, any such tendency, 
it is no less certain that some such reaction was 
natural, and that there is laid upon you, and upon 
the whole American people, peculiar obligations 
at times like the present. You have, at home, in 
the midst of an advanced civilization, the more 
cause to make your whole life conform to the 
highest rules of moral action, in proportion as 



KIND WORDS TO COLORED CITIZENS. gl 

you enjoy privileges and mercies which those 
just freed do not possess, and can only gradually 
attain. You know that the arm is strengthened 
by exercise, and is weakened by disuse. The 
blacksmith's muscles are hard and tough as his 
sinews. The student and the idler — the one from 
exclusive brain-work, and the other from no work 
at all — are useless for almost all physical endeavor. 
So with many of your race. They need the 
exercise of the best qualities of manhood, and 
they need advice and encouragement from others 
in order that the large number just emerging 
from the pit of slavery may find support and 
countenance from the conduct and good behavior 
of their brethren who have enjoyed the blessing 
of freedom for years. There are few fields for 
the missionary and philanthropist where more 
good can be done than among the colored people 
of the South ; and I have undertaken this address 
to-night because I feel that you should not depend 
alone upon your own counsels, but seek from 
those who have had more learning and experi- 
ence all possible help in the improvement of your 
race. I know that the clergy of this city, not of 
your color, are interested in your welfare, and 
that you will gain strength, knowledge, and wis- 
dom by occasionally inviting them to your 
pulpits, and by gradual growth into their habits 
of life and thought. 
I speak plainly and familiarly, hoping to quicken 

4* 



82 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

your desire, your industry, and your faith in the 
dawning future. 

I shall not treat of education (as has been 
announced) in the common acceptation of that 
term. The word is from the Latin language, and 
one part means leader, and was applied to great 
generals or commanders. The word " education'' 
might almost literally be rendered in English 
thus : " To lead out from ignorance, and establish 
the life of knowledge, happiness, and safety." 
When you are led out from temptation, you are 
being educated for a better life. As you are led 
out from ignorance, so you acquire knowledge. 
Schools and books are not entirely within brick 
walls and muslin binding. The whole world is 
a school-house ; every fact in daily life is designed 
as a lesson ; and all iTature is a book of study in 
the progress of education. 

The end of American slavery has brought upon 
your race, which so long suffered under its fearful 
oppression, new responsibilities and duties. That 
rescue has been so recent, that you hardly realize 
the fact and do not yet understand fully how to 
turn to the best advantage the freedom attained. 

Many here present can remember years of 
struggle, during which the best of Christian 
ministers endangered life by advocating emancipa- 
tion, and when the only channel through which 
benevolence could liberate the black man from 
slavery was to secure his exportation to Africa, 



KIND WORDS TO COLORED CITIZENS. 83 

there to begin life anew. I remember very well 
that thirty years ago the Rev. IToah Porter, at 
Farmington, Connecticut, had the windows of 
his lecture-room stoned, because of prayer for 
the slaves captured on the Armistead, who were 
being cared for on a farm near the village. And 
in 1849, when Frederick Douglass attempted to 
speak at the Ohio State House, fire engines were 
brought to the ground, to drown out the audi- 
ence. And yet times changed so rapidly that, 
in 1861, I had the pleasure of delivering a flag 
to Mr. Langston, for the 58th Massachusetts 
Regiment (perhaps the first flag so presented), 
from the terrace of the new State House, near 
where Mr. Douglass had been mobbed. 

The cowardice of State and Church had alike 
protracted the torture of the black race, multi- 
plied the horrors of the dungeon, the lash, and 
the halter, and trained up a blood-hound class of 
leaders as merciless as the trained dogs of the 
Southern planters. 

Year by year the nation increased its debt to 
justice and humanity, until God, in His mercy, 
instead of sending fire from heaven, as He did to 
consume Sodom and Gomorrah, only sent the 
greatest war of human history, and in the blood 
of a million of men, in the wasting of half a na- 
tion, in the tears and groans of countless widows 
and orphans, wiped out that generation of slave 
owners and redeemed a race to liberty. 



84 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

If ever a curse came home to plague its in- 
ventors, it was slavery. The inventor of the guil- 
lotine is said to have had his own head cut off by 
his own ingenious machine. So, blazing cities, 
burning mansions, prostrate industry, and deso- 
lated plantations, felt the wrath of God through 
the march of the once despised Abolitionist. As 
if to make the justice more signal, exquisite, and 
complete, the " colored troops fought bravely," 
and, with arms in their hands, marched side by 
side with their co-deliverers to the enfranchise- 
ment of their people and the rescue of the im- 
perilled Eepublic. 

The boasted liberty which had taken refuge 
from the tyranny of Great Britain, and, embark- 
ing on the Mayflower, had landed in ISTew Eng- 
land, thence to overrun a continent and become 
the light of the world, had fattened itself upon 
human blood and become the agent of the vilest 
outrages upon man. It was righteous and just 
that, in the sequel, I^orthern blood should also 
be spilled ; for I^orthern timidity, avarice, and for- 
getfulness of the God who had delivered them 
from their oppression through the war of the 
Revolution, had hardened their hearts, and they 
refused to let the people go free. 

As if to assimilate to the example of the chil- 
dren of Israel who, when they were hurried out 
of bondage, took the jewels and treasures of their 
task-masters, so houses and lands, and all the 



KIND WORDS TO COLORED CITIZENS. 85 

supplies of the Freedman's Bureau that were 
taken from the oppressors, were converted into 
blessings to aid and comfort the ransomed. The 
scourge of human slavery had so long sounded 
in the land that the Hand of High Heaven turned 
it upon I^orth and South alike, and the wail over 
the death of the first-born was heard in every 
house, as years before it appealed in vain from 
the cabin and the negro quarters. Serfdom had 
ceased, though Slavery lingered. England and 
France had advanced in the right direction ; but 
America kicked against the pricks, and would 
not hear the voice of Providence or the groan of 
the sufferers. 

Before the fall of Fort Sumter, in April, 1861, 
in words to the people of Ohio, and before blood 
was shed, I was impelled to declare this sentiment : 

""We are at war. It is our existence that is 
at stake. The shedding of blood is a mere con- 
tingency in the contest, neither commencing nor 
ending the struggle. We shall not fail, for the 
age, which is an age of struggle, will find Amer- 
ica rooted to the cause of Freedom. We shall 
not abuse our trust. The exalted privilege of 
leading the nations will not lapse from our con- 
trol. Be not deceived. The people, born to 
peace, and dreading the inroad of red war more 
than pestilence and famine, are coming with calm 
and deliberate minds to that sublime but solemn 
conclusion that they will ofier their lives and for- 



86 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

tunes, as a free-will offering, upon tlie altar of 
country, liberty, and independence. I hear the 
shackles of party clang as they are dashed to the 
earth. I see the bonds part that bind the devo- 
tees of self and mammon. I see treasure offered 
without stint or limit to purchase back the rights 
imperilled. I see the presage of a tempest. It 
will gather volume, and roll from the East and 
E"orth and West, until you shall rejoice in every 
sacrifice of treasure, and glory in every drop of 
blood expended for the public weal, for the whole 
continent shall be free, and the nations of the 
world shall pay you homage." 

Fort Sumter fell ! The rest you know. Had 
I declared a dream ? The countless thousands 
of fresh blossoms that so lately exhaled their 
grateful odors from tens of thousands of hon- 
ored graves are fresh testimony that I did not 
then, as one never can, overestimate the grand- 
eur, the scope, the sacrifices, and the issues of 
that struggle. 

The war came, was prosecuted and ended, and 
with it came the end of human slavery. Slowly 
but surely, the bad blood that remains is being 
purified by the application of beneficent laws 
and the persuasion of the necessary constraint, 
so that no long period will elapse before recon- 
structed States shall involve regenerated hearts, 
and the whole nation shall prosper and flower in 
the luxuriance of a better life. 



KIND WORDS TO COLORED CITIZENS. 87 

l!Teitlier have I recalled the past and brought 
back bitter memories, with the purpose of stir- 
ring your passions, or unworthily triumphing 
over misguided countrymen, enemies in arms, 
but again to be brethren at heart. 

The South is rescued from her worst enemy. 
Capital and manufactures and emigration are to 
build up her bulwarks as never could have been 
realized in that former unnatural life. Weights 
are cast oif, and she runs with the ISTorth an even 
race of peaceful industry, in which each section 
shall rejoice and glory in the triumphs of the 
other, and find in the other the complement of 
itself, together, to make the " unit," our common 
country. 

The colored people of the United States should 
look upon the past as the rescued mariner re-lives 
the sufferings he experienced when floating help- 
less upon a sea of unknown peril, that he may 
find new and more abundant cause for gratitude 
to the Giver of all mercy, and be better fitted 
for the realities of life. 

The white man should often look back upon 
his career of power and its wrongful uses, to 
learn how much he owes to a race that so long 
suffered at his hands. 

Hear what I have now to say, with an earnest 
purpose to so live that you will convince the 
world that you are worthy of freedom, and 
worthy of a country which not long hence will 



88 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

know no limit to human privilege but the per- 
petual obligation to do right and deserve God's 
blessing. 

You have diiFerent capacities, tastes, and em- 
ployments. You have many chambers in your 
brain, like the rooms of a house. All should be 
occupied by the right tenants. Hate must be 
expelled and Love must be admitted. All must 
work in harmony, so as to secure the best results 
in every phase of daily life. 

YOUR RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

This is fundamental and will shape all life, ^ot 
alone in the free Northern States, but while 
chained to the wheels of Southern capital and 
power, it has been a peculiarity of your race, 
that respect for so7ne religion has been almost 
instinct and constant. If, for want of other 
friends, a sense of dependence upon the Creator 
drove any to that love of religious worship which 
became so characteristic, it was certainly very 
natural; but behind that was another fact, ac- 
cepted as true by most African travellers, and 
the best writers upon the character of the race. 
The African, even when heathen, is enthusiastic 
in his devotion to some Supreme Being whom he 
accepts as the source of life and blessing. His 
thoroughly innate capacity for music finds the 
highest themes for jubilant praise and melodious 
chorus, in worship. However restricted in senti- 



FOUR RELIGIOUS LIFE. gg 

merit, or novel in execution, there is an overflow 
of zeal and genuine gladness which indicates 
some melody of soul. The Mississippi steamer, 
the plantation, the cahin, and the forest have 
resounded with his songs, when all that he 
seemed to possess, to give thanks for, was mere 
life and the chance of its continuance. Whether 
trudging to the cotton-fields, grinding the cane, 
or driving his team, the ever-jubilant refrain told 
of his capacity for happiness, and how keen were 
his susceptibilities to enjoy. 

Few scenes were more full of wild and thrill- 
ing interest than a visit to some colored church 
at the South on the Sabbath, when a great as- 
sembly, relieved from the pressure of week-day 
duty, made the very walls tremble with the 
volume of their song, and when a strange delight 
and delirium of gladness in the worship of the 
Great Master, seemed almost to separate soul 
from body, and take the spirit into the presence 
of the Invisible. This religious feeling has not 
abated with the rescue of the race ; but, with the 
increased latitude for its indulgence, there must 
be a wise direction given to its fervor, in order 
that it may prove a genuine element in elevating 
and purifying life. It must be refined, method- 
ized and instructed, through intelligence and 
wise counsels. Other conditions of life, pre- 
eminently that of systematic labor, must be 
allied with it, and this is to be accomplished only 



90 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

through your own improvement and correspond- 
ing eifort to improve others. 

Your Sabbath-schools vie with any in their 
outward prosperity, and the generation which is 
now coming to maturity, untrammelled by the 
sneers, the contumely, and abuse of other races, 
can look up and around, and as you address the 
Creator of all things as your God, so you can 
shout and sing, 

" My country, 'tis of thee, 
Sweet land of Liberty, 
Of thee I sing." 

Well was it for your race while in bondage, 
that, instead of simply grovelling like the cowed 
brute under the lash of oppression, there was 
music in your nature that buoyed up your soul 
and gave you access to the Throne. To be an 
African was to be at least a natural musician, 
and but for that ever-present agency, the power 
to sing, how could the race have been saved from 
blindness and degradation too deep and utter to 
have been rescued for generations ? 

Wisely do you cultivate that faculty. It is 
hard to find a spontaneous, cheerful singer, who is 
either loholly rogue or brute. Where song flows as 
the stream, from a constant fountain, there is 
almost always affection, fraternity, and reverence. 
It has been the outlet for the joy of worshippers 
through all ages, and it is the glory of countless 



INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 91 

angels and archangels about the great White 
Throne. It is the happiest outflowing demon- 
stration of purity of heart, and it rises like grate- 
ful incense to the Author of all that blesses man, 
upward, to that God who has given to the rust- 
ling leaves, as well as to the birds, a share in 
the ceaseless song of I^ature, and whose entire 
universe is full of melody in sweet accord with 
His matchless love. 

The stoniest heart is reached by music. Cul- 
tivate it for yourselves and your families, and 
when the hour shall come in which to dedicate 
your new sanctuary to the service of Almighty 
God, let not praise alone abound, but make it 
a sacred temple, from which, with a truly conse- 
crated life, you may go forth into the world, and 
as men see your good works they shall knoAV and 
testify that you walk with God. 

Shouting and singing are not all of religion^ but 
when your music flows from the joy of a peaceful 
spirit and a consistent, pure, and useful life, you 
may rejoice that you can sing, and may well sing 
as you rejoice. 

INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

IN'ext, and handmaid to religion, and essential 
to an intelligent view of religious obligation and 
duty, in the peculiar position of your race is the 
acquisition of knowledge. There are old and 
gray-headed men and women among you, and 



92 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

some of them may not live to see the completion 
of your new church edifice. How painfully have 
the slow years dragged, as they waited for the 
Year of Jubilee ! How has faith wavered, and 
how has it seemed as if the right hand of Jehovah 
was shortened, that it could not save, until, when 
deliverance comes as on the wings of the morn- 
ing, they can almost say with Holy Simei, of old, 
^' Lord, now lettest thy servant depart in peace, 
for mine eyes have seen thy salvation !" 

They were youth when — to strive to read — was 
to suffer. You, their children and grandchildren, 
no longer a despised race, but maturing in the 
work and franchise of freemen, have great induce- 
ment to bring every child and youth into the 
speediest and best cultivation of the head as well 
as the heart. Lead out every good faculty you 
possess. Help educate yourselves. France has 
repeatedly given the honors of her ISTational 
Academy to the colored man. The President 
of the United States has acted in the spirit of 
the American people, by introducing worthy men 
of your color into places of trust and honor. 
The ship yards and printing offices of the United 
States no longer make complexion a test of fitness. 
Moral progress is ever onward and upward. 
There is no back-track for a revolution against 
iniquity. They who do not see the advance of 
Right are the greatest sufierers, whatever their 
profession, trade, or calling. To be deemed 



INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 93 

worthy as any, you must deserve as well as any. 
It matters not wliat may be your occupation, so 
that it be honest and useful ; but it does concern 
you that you acquire knowledge, that you read 
the history of your country, that you read of its 
past so thoroughly as to understand the demands 
of the future, and that every child shall be early 
taught the principles involved in a fair common- 
school education, and thus be able intelligently 
and successfully to keep an even way with those 
who for generations have been in your advance. 
Thus, and thus only, through this constant effort 
at self-improvement, will your field of influence 
enlarge, so that your people will command re- 
spect, and you will be able, in turn, to assist in 
the development and improvement of those hun- 
dreds of thousands at the South who have not 
had the privileges which you enjoy. 

Thus will you lay the foundation for filling 
your pulpits with well-read and successful preach- 
ers of the gospel. It will not answer that they 
have simply the fervor of warm hearts. They 
must, with you, and more than you, cultivate the 
head^ as well as the heart. Thus also will lawyers 
and physicians spring from your midst, who will 
honor noble professions. Thus will you rise to 
the platform of true manhood, and the finger of 
scorn will only rest upon the ignorant and un- 
worthy, whether black or white. 



94 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

POLITICAL LIFE. 

The embers that now and then flash in the 
extinguishment of the rebellion will soon be as 
dead as the ashes about them. Sooner or later 
you will go to the polls, and as you now pay 
taxes, so will you take part in selecting the men 
who collect and disburse those taxes. As there 
were those who denied in 1860 and in the spring 
of 1861 that a war was coming : as there were 
men who had no faith in its success and the has- 
tening end of slaver}^ so there may possibly be 
those who will not see the position you are to 
occupy as men. 

Temporary opposition and the discussion of its 
prudence or safety cannot long delay the consum- 
mation, if you are faithful to manhood, and be 
careful to deserve that which the nation tenders. 
Prepare yourselves for the coming duty. ITearly 
every institution of vice in the land retains life, 
only because honest, patriotic, and Christian voters 
do not unite for the best men and the best cause. 
Your votes mil be wanted by everybody. You 
will find before long that you are thought a great 
deal of, and will be surprised how suddenly the 
idea came to light. Become fully Americanized ; 
that is, identify yourselves with the welfare of 
the entire people. Inspired by religion, endowed 
by education with the discrimination you require, 
come squarely up to the standard of earnest, 



FOUR PERSONAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. 95 

honest, and. independent freemen, and your 
country shall have cause to be proud of you, as 
you will be proud of your country. 

Already you have your color in the army. 'No 
American officer need feel ashamed to own him- 
self *' an officer of a colored regiment." Colored 
regiments meet their duty on the plains, or else- 
where, with credit to themselves and the nation. 
Clad in the panoply of right, fill up the measure 
of recurring daily duty, so that when you vote 
for the first time, and have a country in fact, you 
may feel like shouting, as I trust you may, when 
you exchange an earthly home for the heavenly, 
^' home at last !^' 

I am no politician, and seek none of its noto- 
riety or honors. I assume a fact which I know 
to be assured; and, as a fellow-man, I give you 
counsel upon principles of life and conduct, 
which, being those of Christian manhood, pre- 
dicated upon the laws of God, govern us all, what- 
ever our calling or color ; and I speak under the 
conviction, that had I declined to meet you in 
the spirit of your assurance that my work would 
do you good, I would be unworthy my profession 
and my citizenship. 

YOUK PEE/SONAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. 

It is possible, my friends, for a freeman to be 
an educated. Christian man, and still to lack 
many qualities of person, or habitudes of life, 



96 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

tliat impart completeness to character, and dis- 
tinguish an eminently useful life. 

Good manners, neatness, and the outward 
refinement of the gentleman are by no means to 
be despised or neglected. As a people you have 
some natural aptitudes for othel* social qualities 
besides that comprehended in taste for music. 
The white man has, in fact, made money from 
crowded houses for years, by calling many most 
pathetic, joyous, or spirited airs '^ Mhiopian Melo- 
dies,'^ and has complimented you thereby. If he 
borrows or imitates your music, see to it, that in 
your imitations from him, you select only that 
which is refined in manners and inures to your 
radical and permanent improvement. 

A clean, tidy cabin, however humble, if suited 
to your means, can be a home that will speak to 
every passing stranger of thrift, taste, and happi- 
ness. 

"We have abundant social feeling, and no 
people are more addicted to those neighborly 
reunions which develop the impulse of mutual 
support in afiliction no less than that of sympathy 
in all rational and substantial pleasures. 

Home is the first place to make happy. Let the 
gambling den, and all indulgence that wastes 
time, energy, or money, without imparting sup- 
port or happiness to your family, or benefit to 
your head or heart, be shunned as you would 
shun a viper. Slavery of the body and soul to 



YOUR PERSONAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. 97 

vicious indulgence is worse than the slavery from 
which your race has been redeemed by blood. 
It is the immediate curse of this nation, and a 
heavier burden to bear than the national debt, 
that physical indulgence and extravagance gene- 
rally are dulling moral perception, and running 
the people after that which satisfieth not. 

But, my friends, the best personal and social 
life involves labor. Work is the law of our being. 
All work will not be alike in worldly dignity or 
income. Life, in every sphere, has its methods 
and values ; but the obligation of labor is ever 
present. E'ature gives her examples. From the 
bursting seed, ambitious to come out to the air 
and breathe life with us, to the forest tree which 
by slow struggle has attained a power to resist 
the tornado and put to fault all human resistance, 
there is still found this law of patient, earnest 
work. If you look for a man whom you would 
trust, it is not the corner-loafer ; but it is that man 
who, day by day, has something honest to do, 
and does it perseveringly, and, therefore, does it 
well. Women work ; and in the sphere of home 
they toil with a faithfulness and devotion that 
does not alone impart to the life of man its solace 
and consolation ; but when the care and culture 
of children have had their due attention, woman, 
by her intuitive perception, comes in with her 
counsels to strengthen and fortify man for duty, 
just as her gentleness, trust, and love make of 



98 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

home a "heaven in contrast with the turmoil of 
out-door life. 

Life, as a rule, is all work. Pleasure is but a 
style of rest to body or brain, and is the balm 
which soothes the strain of labor, and not only 
refreshes the worker, but gives new zest to the 
work itself. Therefore, man and woman, rejoice 
in your ability to work. The drone of a hive 
must die. So the idle man or woman starves, 
and no willing companion is found to give re- 
freshment earned by the toil of others. The old 
proverb, that " man is the architect of his own 
fortunes," is a good one. Buildings do not 
grow, as does the mushroom, in the night, to be 
given to man in the morning, without labor. 
Even the mushroom worked, though man did not 
help it grow, and thou.gh he slept while it labored. 
The problem is simple, and the humblest have 
their appropriate field of labor. The whole law 
of human progress is embodied in the question 
of personal respectability and individual duty. 

A symmetrical life is not one which has plac- 
idly and evenly developed, undisturbed by, or in- 
different to, its surroundings, but one that has 
surmounted obstacles, and has realized complete- 
ness through struggle and victory. 

I have seen plaster casts that at first seemed 
true to the original marble statue which they 
were designed to imitate. How differently were 
they fashioned 1 The copy could have been made 



FOUR PERSONAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. 99 

by any common worker, without the expenditure 
of much brains or genius. The original has been 
cut from the stone itself, by countless thousands 
of strokes, and when the earnest worker under- 
went wellnigh infinite anxiety lest in delicacy of 
touch, perfection of outline, or development of 
expression, contour or feature, he should so fail, 
that the failure would be signal and complete. 

Thus, a well-developed, perfect life, has felt the 
chisel and hammer, and has attained complete- 
ness, not by the passive acceptance of a compress 
into some established mould, which was only 
mechanical and without the ethereal spirit to 
give to the result the highest success, but has 
been the sequel to struggles and blows. 

In a small attic room, under a sky-light win- 
dow, surrounded by all the circumstances that 
indicated indigence, isolation, and struggle, there 
was heard the click of the hammer upon a fine 
chisel, as it took from the marble block such del- 
icate fragments that they fell as dust before the 
worker. The eye and face of the sculptor were 
almost those of an insane man. The suspended 
breath was followed by sighs of relief, only as 
now and then some partial success seemed to 
bring a single feature into harmony with the 
ideal of the brain. 

Hours passed, and the man worked on. In 
the next garret a cobbler pegged away at his 
honest work, wondering how a man could thus 



100 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

be bothered, day by day, and week upon week, 
simply to cut a stone to shape. The sculptor died, 
and few followed him to his humble resting- 
place. His statue, the achievement of a life of 
struggle, lived on, and gave to his memory the 
savor of an honored name, and it became the 
model for copyists and worshipping admirers so 
long as time shall render tribute to art. Such is 
the memory of a faithful life, and in that devo- 
tion to work is epitomized the law for your strug- 
gle and mine. As the river, that bears great 
ships, and is tributary to the commerce of the 
world, is the aggregate of unnumbered minor 
streams, so its history is peculiar. It was not 
always the perfect, majestic moving agent of 
commerce. Some of its feeding tributaries 
gained birth in little springs, whose fountains 
had barely life enough to overflow their basins, 
or trickle from the mountain side, to strengthen, 
drop by drop, the nearest little brook. Sands 
absorbed and suns dried out much of their first 
expenditure of moisture. Summer showers, or 
the early meltings of the winter snow, rendered 
timely contributions, so that at last, all combined 
with other streams, alike of humble birlii, to 
make that river. Work, progress, and the com- 
bination of all small agencies toward a common 
end, secured the result. 

Thus began the struggle to achieve freedom 
for 3^our race, and that noble man, Chief Justice 



YOUR PERSONAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. IQl 

Chase, who adorns the seat of Chief Justice 
Marshall, attained his place hy earnest work, 
and, above all, that earnest work that endures 
forever — consistent, constant work for Liberty 
and Right. 

Our individual life, from its beginning, has 
been a struggle. We came into the world cry- 
ing, wailing infants, as if conscious of life's trials 
yet to come. The first struggle for a pair of 
boots, for marbles, tops, or other boy-time toys 
or amusements, was representative of the fact 
that all acquirement was to be gained through 
desire, labor, and struggle. 

The ambition and competition, the quarrels 
and jealousies of boyhood, youth, and manhood, 
whether in study, amusement, or work, have all 
had their natural place in this sphere of struggle. 
There have been historic periods, characters, and 
emergencies, when the distinctness, boldness, and 
results of struggle have given names to dynasties, 
characters, or issues, which for a time have re- 
tained their prestige as memorable examples for 
the information, warning, or encouragement of 
other generations. 

But, as a general law, as with the river, so it 
is with States and races. The general result is 
regarded by the world without regard to the in- 
dividual elements that secured the result, until 
Time's Avenger, the Judge of all the earth, shall 
declare, before the assembled universe, the exact 



102 CRISIS THOUGHTS, 

measure of lionor clue even to the humblest of all 
His creatures. Individuals are smothered in the 
rubbish of the past, but the Omniscient Father 
has in keeping the record of every thought or 
deed that has advanced His glory. 

If the islands of the Pacific, delivered from 
the bowels of the earth by mighty upheavals of 
the volcano or earthquake, have been fertilized 
and planted through the visits of the birds of the 
air, and from seeds borne across the ocean by the 
winds of heaven, how much more certainly are 
the small matters of daily duty to be traced for- 
ward and shaped by well-timed estimate of their 
value, so that they may intelligently work to 
the perfection of character and the blessing of 
life. 

One thought more just here. 

The great victories of the battle-field have 
almost always turned upon something so slight 
that any other contingency would have lost the 
issue. Hoiv did the spade and pick-axe of plain, 
honest farmers, ninety-three years ago, this very day, 
give to Bunker Hill its glory ? How uncertain were 
the waiting hours that, with Blucher's arrival, 
gave to England her Waterloo ! How, above 
all strange, was that madness of passion which 
evoked the American rebellion, and out of its 
suppression perfected American liberty, and 
gave to the world, at last, the example of one 
free republic. That vast expenditure of blood 



YOUR PERSONAL AND SOCIAL LIFE, 103 

and treasure was made up of individual struggle, 
most of it unheralded and unhonored by man; 
but in and through that struggle, there sprang 
forth in fresh beauty and glory, the secret of 
success for all individual or national endeavor, 
" Devotion to Didi/.'' 

To your young men, I say that you are all 
sculptors, chipping out your fortunes. ITo man 
of any spirit, whether black or white, and having 
any just idea of his capacity and destiny, will 
be passively cast by others from any mould, nor 
will he accept, as satisfactory to himself, any 
result for his life that lacks the endurance of the 
real marble. 

You are all, likewise, contributing your share 
to the momentum and volume of that great cur- 
rent of life which represents the republic, and 
which, flowing out over both oceans, bathes the 
shores and receives the out-flowing streams from 
other lands and people. You fight the battle of 
life and share a part in the great warfare that 
must culminate in victory for every faithful 
heart, and will realize its complete glory in an 
enfranchised world. 

Take my well-intended counsels to your homes 
and to your daily work. You will get some im- 
pressions from what I say. You will have new 
responsibilities because of this interview. You 
cannot walk a rod and breathe the air you live 
in without receiving some impression upon your 



104 CmSIS THOUGHTS. 

health and physical being. 'Not a drink of water 
passes your lips that has not its humble place in 
the economy of your active life. Yet a thank- 
less soul regards neither with any proper regard 
for the Author of daily mercies, just as those 
who live on that belt of our earth beneath which 
the molten lava sways and surges, rebuild their 
frail habitations just so soon as the foundations 
cease to tremble from the earthquake, or the lava 
from the volcano has cooled sufficiently for their 
work. 

You may go away to-night and forget, for the 
present, all I have said. Some who have not 
fully understood all will neglect to ask of others 
who did. The time will come when you will 
remember every wasted opportunity and every 
slighted counsel. It will be your fault, one and 
all, if you do not go aAvay with some thought, 
some new purpose, some fresh resolve to be better 
and more useful planted deep down in your 
breast. You are res.ponsible for the improve- 
ment of good advice jus.t as much as for the 
proper use of hands that are given you for labor, 
and for obedience to that conscience which is 
established in your hearts to declare the right 
and reject the wrong. Many of you, I know, 
will treat this hour as a social occasion, quite 
pleasant as it passes, forgetful that every hour 
has its lesson and its duties, and that there is no 
escape from responsibility for the improvement 



FOUR PERSONAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. 105 

of every occasion in which to gain fresh incentive 
to hecome stronger, purer, and better. 

Eemember that you are bound to take part in 
daily struggle whether you do or do not wish to 
do so. The winds of heaven are ever in motion. 
"When you think all is silence, far above you there 
are ceaseless currents that aifect your being, and 
nothing in the Universe of God is at rest. 

When men do not praise Him, the bursting 
seed, the lifting grain, the speeding waters, the 
forming crystals, the absorbing leaves which live 
on dew and air, and those past generations of 
shells and vegetation, which have been so long 
maturing into limestone or coal for the use of 
man, are all lively at work, and unceasingly join 
in glad tribute to the Great Creator for His wis- 
dom, goodness, power, and love. 

Thus you must work and struggle, if you 
would attain any good thing. To be sure, it will 
not always be easy thus to work. There is no 
struggle and nothing gained when there is no 
opposition or resistance. Hence reward is held 
out to entice labor forward. There is no pursuit 
of an object in hand. There is no climbing of a 
mountain after the summit is reached. But you 
have not reached the end of life's pursuit, and 
every hour wasted is loss irreparable. There- 
fore, work on. Every passion, purpose, or desire 
of man only works toward its object through 
struggle. It is for each one of you, for me, and 



106 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 

for every human soul to determine on what to 
expend effort ; and to each soul is left the more 
solemn responsibility to see to it that he does not 
spend his strength for bubbles that burst in the 
grasp. 

I have sufficiently occupied your time. By 
forthcoming provisions of the Constitution of the JRe- 
public you will come into new spheres of activity and 
duty, and corresponding responsibilities will devolve 
upon you. 

In meeting you on this occasion, I cheerfully 
say that I hail with gladness the coming day of 
your matured freedom. I have felt it to be my 
duty, however feebly, to attempt to touch, here 
and there, some chord that would so vibrate as 
to leave a happy cadence sounding in your souls. 
Have 3"0u ever thought a moment how far little 
things travel, or how vast the range of mischief 
which single acts embrace ? The disobedience 
of our first parents, the murder of Abel, the dis- 
grace OF Ham, have each and all swept down the 
stream of time regardless of the flight of ages 
and the death of generations, and still these 
memorial sins rest heavy upon all who are now 
called upon to profit by the lessons those crimes 
inculcate. Let your acts and lives come so nearly 
to the requirements of duty that, through the 
blood of the Great Redeemer, you shall do your 
life's work acceptably, and be spared the curse 
that awaits the unprofitable servant. 



YOUR PERSONAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. 107 

It will soon be no novelty to have white men 
appointing places at which to meet and address 
you. I am here, casually, on duty as a soldier, 
and, I hope, a soldier of the Cross, as well as of 
my country. To refuse to address you upon the 
presumption that the soldier has no interest in 
your welfare which he could express, would have 
been to stultify my conscience, and refuse utter- 
ance to the hopes and expectations of thirty 
years, which are no longer matters of faith, but 
of speedy experience, as Freedom achieves its 
crowning triumphs in equal franchise for all. I 
have, therefore, in the spirit, as I believe, of the 
great religious interest which now pervades this 
people, told you plainly what seems to me to be 
a noble path for your steps to trace. 

Though in a very few days I shall complete the 
duty which called me here, and I shall certainly 
never meet you all again, it is my earnest hope 
that He, whose temple you build, may meet you 
as you first assemble within its walls. Build it 
with open hands and willing hearts. Giving to 
God will enrich and not impoverish. When 
completed, let it be consecrated with the best 
gifts you can render, the gift of hearts. 

So shall your life, when ended, go not out like 
some fading taper ; but, catching radiance from 
the Heavens opened to receive you, the spirit 
shall quickly pass the skies, to shine afresh and 
forever in the transcendent efiulgence of the Sun 



108 CRISIS THOUGHTS, 

of Righteousness. Your franchise there will be 
the liberty with which Christ shall set His people 
free. Your country there will be a Heavenly 
country. Your home there will be that prepared 
for you from the foundations of the world. The 
Temple wherein your offerings of praise and 
thanksgiving shall be rendered there will be a 
temple not built with hands, but that which 
fadeth not away, eternal in the Heavens. So 
may you struggle. So may you, so may we all, 

ATTAIN ! 



A HIGHLY INTERESTING WORK. 

(LAND OF MASSACRE.) 

Experiences of an Officer's Wife on the Plains. Third FJdifion, 

Jievised, Enlarged, and Illustratfd. By Col. Henry B, 

Carrington, U,S,A. Large 12mo. Extra Clothf $1.5 O, 

Published by J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., Philadelphia. 

This edition of " Ab-sa-ra-ka," in addition to the narrative of the 
original occupation of the Big Horn Country, in 1866, contains the 
following matter: I. Revised Maps, giving New Forts, Camps, and 
Agencies. II. Outline of Indian affairs, 1865-7, with personal con- 
ferences held with " The Whistler," " Pawnee Killer," " The Man that 
stands alone on the Ground," "Spotted Tail," and other chiefs. III. 
Outline of negotiations and military operations from 1867 to 1878, in 
that region, including the massacre of General Custer's command. 
IV. In memoriam. 

" The whole work is one to be commended." — Indianapolis N^ws. 

" No reader who wishes to be really informed concerning Indian lifp, man- 
ners, and customs should fail to procure this most interesting volume." — St. 
Low's Post. 

'The individual who wishes to get down very near to the kernel of the 
Indian problem, will find that Mrs. Carrington can help him while she gives 
h m very pleasant entertainment." — Philada. Evening Bulletin. 

"It is interesting to the young, and instructive to all." — Indianapolis 
Journal. 

BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 

By COL HENRY B. CARRINGTON, U.S.A., M.A,, LL.D. 

■With 40 Maps. Cloth, $6.00 ; Sheep, $7.50 ) Half Calf or Morocco, $9.00 ) 
Half Russia or Full Morocco, $12.00 ! Full Russia, $15.00. 

Published by A. S. Barnes &, Co., New York, Chicago, and New 

Orleans ; London Depot, Hodder & Stoughton, No. 27 Paternoster 

Eow; Liverpool Depot, Wm. Howell, 26 and 28 Church St. 

" To me, at least, it will be an authority." — Ex. Prest. Woolsey. 

" Fills an important place in history not before occupied." — Hon. W. M. 
Evarts, JV F. 

" Will find a place in all public and private libraries." — Hon. A. F. Perry, O. 

" The maps themselves are a history invaluable." — Henry Day, Esq., N. V. 

" An entirely new field of historical labor. A splendid volume." — Hon. Geo. 
Bancroft. 

" It is an absolute necessity in our literature." — Benson J. Lossing, Esq. 

" The maps are just splendid." — Adj. Gen. W. L. Stnjker, N. J. 

" The book is invaluable." — W. L. Stine, Esq. 

" Will give to the author enduring fame." — Hon. B. Gratz Brown, Mo. 

"It is a monument of national history." — A. Rnchambeau, Paris, France. 

"No man can comprehend the American Revolution without it." — Chas. E. 
Pearce, Esq., Mo. 

'' The most accurate and impartial criticism on military affairs in this country 
which this centurj' has produced." — Army and Nai^y Journal. 

"Fills in a definite form what has been a somewhat vague period of military 
history." — Col. Hamley, Queen's Stajf College, Eng. 

" The descriptions ot battles are vivid. The actors seem to be alive, and the 
actions real."^J?ei'. Br. 0' Crane. 



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